The Beauty Myth

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. The Beauty Myth, subtitled How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women, and published in 1991 by Bantham Doubleday Dell Publishing, is a nonfiction book by Naomi Wolf. It was republished in 2002 with a new introduction by Wolf. The basic premise of The Beauty Myth is that forced adherence to standards of physical beauty has grown stronger for women as they gained power in other societal arenas. In the book, Wolf argued that "beauty" as a normative value is entirely socially constructed, and that the patriarchy determines the content of that construction with the goal of reproducing its own hegemony. Wolf also posited the idea of an "iron-maiden," an intrinsically unattainable standard of beauty that is then used to punish women physically and psychologically for their failure to achieve and conform to it.