Beauty Myth

Amani Mosa April. 26, 2013 English 120 -­ 013 Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf Page 3. “This embodiment is an imperative for women and not for men, which situation is necessary and natural because it is biological, sexual, and evolutionary: Strong men battle for beautiful women, and beautiful women are more reproductively successful.” I found this quote interesting, but I didn’t understand exactly what Wolf meant by this. Page 4. “The beauty myth is not about women at all. It is about men’s institutions and institutional power.” I’m not too sure what Wolf means by this quote, but I do believe men have a huge impact on how we, women, see ourselves. Men seem to have an influence on women and how we tend to see ourselves, if a guy tells us we are “ugly” we would quickly believe him even if it’s taken as a joke. Not all men tend to be positive, instead they can verbally abuse a woman and make her feel inferior. This lowers her self-­esteem and makes her not like herself. Having such a negative influence on a women can make her not feel beautiful, even if she is. In an episode I watched on Nip and Tuck, one of the surgeons didn’t want to have sexual relations with his wife because he no longer found her beautiful, she then asked him to fix her body in order for him to like her again. Page 5. “Since the Industrial Revolution, middle-­class Western women have been controlled by ideals and stereotypes as much as by material constraints.” We are given the idea that a perfect women actually exist;; she’s tall, beautiful, slim, and without any flaws. We don’t realize that she doesn’t exist. Many women are not content with how they look because they don’t see their body types advertised and the media is