The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women

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Harper Collins, Mar 17, 2009 - Social Science - 368 pages
The bestselling classic that redefined our view of the relationship between beauty and female identity.

In today's world, women have more power, legal recognition, and professional success than ever before. Alongside the evident progress of the women's movement, however, writer and journalist Naomi Wolf is troubled by a different kind of social control, which, she argues, may prove just as restrictive as the traditional image of homemaker and wife. It's the beauty myth, an obsession with physical perfection that traps the modern woman in an endless spiral of hope, self-consciousness, and self-hatred as she tries to fulfill society's impossible definition of "the flawless beauty."

 

Contents

Introduction
1
The Beauty Myth
9
Work
20
Culture
58
Religion
86
Sex
131
Hunger
179
Violence
218
Beyond the Beauty Myth
270
Acknowledgments
292
Notes
293
Bibliography
329
Index
337
Copyright

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About the author (2009)

Naomi Wolf is the author of seven books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Beauty Myth, Promiscuities, Misconceptions, The End of America, and Give Me Liberty. She writes for the New Republic, Time, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Huffington Post, Al Jazeera, La Repubblica, and the Sunday Times (London), among many other publications. She lives with her family in New York City.