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

Rating:
Summary: Ladies, here's some food for thought!
Review: I like in particular one point she makes: We as women judge each other harshly based on looks. Don't we get enough of that from men? She cites several examples of how women are punished for their aesthetic quotient, from cradle to boardroom to grave. She says we should be judged on grey matter rather than trivia such as hair color.

Rating:
Summary: serious disappointment
Review: i was very glad to get my hands on this book, but quick to put it down in disgust. while i know, i have experienced, what she it trying to say, i can't get past her manner of presentation, and the fact that she has information in the book that is simply *incorrect.* for example, when she discusses the cult of beauty and fat-hate, she mentions how hare krishnas spend seven hours daily in mind numbing chant. well, as a hare krishna myself, i can state that this is irrefutably false. way to go, naomi.

Rating:
Summary: muddy, unoriginal, and unreadable
Review: For the life of me, I can't figure out why this book ever took off. I've tried to read it twice now and still cannot slog through the bad writing, lack of logical structure, and Ms. Wolf's seeming inability to successfully support any argument. Considering that most of her arguments are extremely shopworn, that's a pretty sad comment. We all know all this stuff anyway--the media gives us impossible images to live up to, beauty carries too much weight in our society, anorexia and bulimia are on the rise. Skip this one and try her other books instead--like Promiscuities and Fire with Fire. Did she learn to write, or find an excellent editor for those ones? Whichever, at least they're real and original books, not a mishmash of random thoughts.

Rating:
Summary: Makes you think
Review: The book makes you think. I wish all young men would read it. Great thought provocation on gender issues. Easy to read because of the chapter break down, but heavy material. I suppose you can use statistics any way you want, but she's definitely got some points to make that made sense to me as a woman. Great for anyone writing a paper or something. On the same note of oppression, there is some great material out there about the male american experience as well.

Rating:
Summary: The evidense for authers assumption are real myth
Review: The Beuaty Myth has very little substance to it. The author appears to be just letting out all her anger agianst the world. She maks many wery broad and damning accusations however she does not back any of these accusations up with any evidence. Also, she says the same thing over and over throughout the book. Mrs.Wolf beleives that there is a conspiracy of sorts agianst all women. This conspiracy has led to the stall that has occurred in the feminest movement. She beleives that corporations and men of the world are trying to make women bekeive that they are not pretty or that if they are that they are stupid. by doing this they are insuring that society will continue to be make dominated and that corportions will be able to continue to make a great deal of money from women. Mrs. Wolf does little to supprt this the reader is just expected to beleive it. Well I for one did not.

Rating:
Summary: An angry book that speaks to, for, and against women.
Review: In her book, The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf brings up many ideas concerning women and their relationship with society in terms of beauty. While some of the ideas are OK Wolf tends to overdramatize a lot of things. Either she is blaming men and society as a whole for the opression of women through beauty or she is blaming women for letting it happen to them. She continually portrays women as victims of men, fashion, and the workplace. She undermines our sucesses and tries to place the blame somewhere. She drowns the reader with evidence to back up her opinion. While there are some things which I would have liked to agree with her on her tone is so angry and bitter that I couldn't take her side. At times I was even offended because she makes it sound like anyone even remotely interested in fashion or cosmetics is setting the womens movement back by adhering to societies vision of women. Some of the statistics that she gives as evidence of her opinion are surely outdated as this book was written over seven years ago.

Rating:
Summary: Good intentions but far fetched and dry
Review: The Beauty Myth is a well intended book that brings to light the injustices that women serve, but is overly broad in concept and seemingly illogical. Wolf uses ample evidence to support the fact that women are mistreated and unjustly undergo far more than men do, however, her rational for why the beauty myth exisits seems a bit extreem and far fetched. The more I read The Beauty Myth, the more annoyed I became with the authors tone towards beauty and men. As a women, I aprreciated some of what was written but could never really buy into the concept of the beauty myth. Wolf, had a lot of facts about women and their struggle and made some very logical connections between why and how certain events evloved and allowed women to be so concerned with beauty. How and why women become engulfed by beauty is explained very well. However,I could never quite grasp how she logically can bridge the gap to men being responisble for the creation of the beauty myth. Also, she makes things to broad and vague at times. She catoragizes all women together, and I think that women as a whole are very different from one another and that gender is a very small and inconsequential likeness that people have in common. Also I found the book to be very repetative and almost as if she just puts more words in there not to prove her point and add more support, but just to add more words. I kept saying to myslef, you already said that, say something new. Maybe it was that I could never get past the feelings I felt in the begining of the book, about her being a man-hater, and so I never gave the book a chance, but I really did try to be open minded and objective about reading this book. I think what I found hard to grasp was the idea that women just have it so hard. As a young women, I felt that I would rather be a women today than in any other period in history. I just felt like enough is never enough, there is always something more to complain about. The last thing women need is to feel "sorry" for themselves and dwell on all the injustices of the world. So although some still exist, I hardly think that the ones that do exist are worth whinning about. The book seems to be rather extreem and harsh. And to add to the problem, it was dry reading. Although I did try and give Wolf some credit, she did an excellent job in finding facts about women and interpreting historical events and how those changes were brought about. And I do realize that she is mainly writing about the 80's and I really am not a daughter of the 80's but the 90's. What she is saying may have been true of the 80's, but I think it is out dated for the 90's. Overall, I would not recommend the book to anyone, except in reading what theories are out there regarding women and beauty obsessions.

Rating:
Summary: The book distinguishes real vs. ideal.
Review: The Beauty Myth is an extrodianrily rare book. It focuses on how images of beauty are used against women by examining the figment all women measure themselves, and eachother, against - the Iron Maiden. The author, Naomi Wolf connects women's feelings of inferiority to the evidence they are dominated in religion, culture, and the workplace. Images of beauty in advertising and pornography contribute to the rise in cosmetic surgery and our society's obsession with thinness and perfection. The book attempts to illustrate how women are divided, as competetors for the scarce beauty there is that is recognized. Wolf presents a few great points and lots of supporting evidence. She lacks an interesting writing style, however, and hashes out the same point 200 pages too long. The Beauty Myth would make a moving essay, but as a book, beats a dead horse.

Rating:
Summary: A terrifying view of women reality.
Review: In "The Beauty Myth," Naomi Wolf crudely describes how women's identities are been destroyed by a myth of beauty, which proclaims physical appearance as the essential "thing" to go through this life successfully. The future of a woman is dark without being tall, having great legs, and a cute face. This horrible perspective has drawn women into low-fat and fat-free food. And not being this enough, women have got to the point, where they are starving in order to maintain their figures. Unfortunately all their effort to have the ideal body are worthless though anorexia and bulimia are the results of this insane idea. Advertising, movies, and magazines are threatening women physically and psychologically. Cosmetic and clothing companies make their money by making women believe they are ugly. And what is worst of all, we are taught since we are little that to be beautiful has nothing to do with personality, mental skills, or kindness, but instead witht physical appearance. Women grow with the obsession of being ugly and the despaired desire to be beautiful. Thick layers of makeup and extreme diets are the results of the low self-esteem that women have. They practically hate their bodies and have low self-image. Even though this myth has been around for so many years, Wolf presents a possible solution. According to her, a point to start will be the reinterpretation of "beauty." It is essential to clarify that beauty doesn't refer only to physical appearance but to women as human beings. Another clue point is to change women attitudes toward this myth. It is the way in which women respond to the media's bombarding what will make a difference.

Rating:
Summary: Mission impossible? Not so, according to Wolf.
Review: Makeovers are such an inherent part of growing up female that the ritual goes largely unquestioned by many young women. Naomi Wolf, from a decidedly Marxist angle, proposes that women should re-examine the purpose of "beautification" rituals; advertising; and magazine images in "The Beauty Myth." The essence of her book is that economy always determines what a society's beauty ideal is, and that this myth of ideal, objective beauty works politically to keep women striving for less freedom and choice. This myth encourages women to loathe themselves, through a quest for perfection in never-ending transformation. If there's one point that Wolf stresses, it is that women need to stop blaming themselves for negative self-worth. This is not about individual women, this is about a whole society of women. This is an epidemic, Wolf argues. She encourages women to see that a social atmosphere is what is really responsible, and she shows this through a sizeable amount of detailed examples and scholarly sources. Her prose is always sophisticated and at times, genius. Her use of metaphor, anectdote, and extensive analogy make her book a fascinating read as she ties aspects of female culture into the larger society (her analogies are especially effective in the "Work" chapter). In writing "The Beauty Myth", Wolf took the job upon herself to research and assemble facts about such things as marketing tactics and cosmetic surgery economics for women who don't have the time or resources to do so. True, she does seem to push an agenda--encouraging a third wave of feminism--but her ideas are sound, not radical. In tying all the facts together so cohesively, it is inevitable that she would have a grand theory. She does not detail a set plan for change--her overall intention seems to be to give women, and especially young women, a different way to see themselves. She shows how they have the ability to both propel or dispel the beauty myth. "The Beauty Myth" is a dossier of information, and Wolf leaves this self-empowerment mission up to us, should we choose to accept it.