The Beauty Myth Research Paper

In the early 1990’s, it was reported that eleven million women in the United States suffer from various eating disorders. At the same time, at least ninety percent of people struggling with eating disorders are female (Stephens). Many researchers tried to figure out why so many women today were suffering from these terrible conditions that destroy people from the inside out. After thorough amounts of research were done, it was concluded that today’s society generates intense amounts of pressure on women to fit an “ideal image” of the models they see in various ways. Thanks to false advertising, false images of women, and the changing “desires” of society, the Beauty Myth gives women an image of themselves that is physically impossible to achieve.
A small number of consumer researchers sought to find how advertising involving thin and attractive models leads to chronic dieting, body dissatisfaction, and eating disorders in American women. They found that exposure to ads with attractive models can increase a woman’s dissatisfaction with her appearance, and therefore convincing her she needs whatever the ad was trying to sell (Stephens). On another note, survey data indicated that between one-half and three-fourths of females who have normal weights perceive themselves as too heavy. It was also found that forty percent of underweight women regard their weight as “normal”. A different study found from the Melpomone Institute for Women’s Health Research said that thirty percent of female participants chose an ideal shape that was twenty percent underweight, as well as an additional forty-four percent that chose a shape that was ten percent underweight (Stephens). Overall, seventy-four percent of women who participated in the study chose an image that was underweight. The American female’s “quest for the perfect body” is both shown and even promoted through advertising, as they promise complete body transformations such as “Buns of Steel”, “Lose forty pounds in six weeks” and “If you drink iced water instead of tepid, you burn ten more calories per glass” (Stephens).
However, making this standard for women go away is much easier said than done. Virginia Woolf said that “It is far more difficult to murder a phantom than a reality” (Wolf 2). With this in mind, Naomi Wolf in her book “The Beauty Myth” tried to understand what the Beauty Myth is based on. She argues that the Beauty Myth is not about women at all. “It claims to be about intimacy and sex and life, a celebration of women. It is actually composed of emotional distance, politics, finance, and sexual repression.” In other words, Wolf said that “The Beauty Myth is about men’s institutions and institutional power” (Wolf 13). In her book, Wolf never mentioned specific “ways” to get rid of the beauty myth. She does, however, say this: “If we are to free ourselves from the dead weight that has once again been made out of femaleness, it is not ballots of lobbyists or placards that women will need first; it is a new way to see” (Wolf 19). In order for the Beauty Myth to truly be destroyed, people need to look beyond the modern aspects of society that portray women in such objectifying ways. If changes are to be made, women need to stand up for themselves and see themselves as the beautiful women they were created to