The Beauty Myth Naomi Wolf Analysis

899 Words4 Pages

The discussion held during class today was focused on the excerpt from The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women; written by Naomi Wolf. Within the text, the class focused on Wolf’s arguments. More specifically, how she argues with definitive facts that demonstrate the rise of beauty-related problems in the last decade, the nature versus culture debate within the context of beauty myth, and society’s involvement and understanding of the beauty myth. Moreover, the class discussed whether or not they believed that the women of today are worse off than our un-liberated grandmothers. What I found compelling was the opposing views to this idea. Some students stated that the people of today have been made more vulnerable to psychological manipulations. Such as, eating disorders and cosmetic surgeries; this of which creates a more consequential beauty standard due to the fact that people are causing harm to their own bodies. Whilst other students stated the fact that people of today are more free to choose how they depict beauty whilst our un-liberated grandmothers were physically forced to specific beauty standards. Such as, taking to the extreme of bleaching their skin pale and cramming themselves into tight pants to try and conform to the ideal slim waist. I found these two opposing arguments intriguing because I never thought of the beauty standards in different forms, but the class created …show more content…

What I found compelling was when the point about how we, as a society understand beauty only through the lens of power, not culture. Not only this, but I was able to come up with the idea that beauty only speaks to the power dynamic; that is the very fact that women are to serve men. This truly impacts my idea on beauty myth because I find beauty myth as a natural selection and culture is stripped away almost

Open Document