“The Beauty Myth”: How beauty images are used against women.
The premise of the book, published in 1990, is that while women’s power and social prominence have increased, the pressure they feel to take on unrealistic social standards of physical beauty has also grown sharply due to commercial influences in the media.
Wolf puts aside the controversy of whether beauty is objective and independent of any gaze, (see “The Beauty” by Roger Scruton) or is subjective, and is in the brain of the receiver, (see “History of Beauty” d ‘Umberto Eco), and argues that there is a “Professional Beauty Requirement” (PBR) that needs to be combated.
In the book she raises the existence of a perverse relationship between female liberation, the advancement of women, and the demand for increasingly impossible ideals of beauty. It also indicates that the myth of beauty currently functions as a device to keep women in the subordinate position they had occupied for centuries. The biggest danger is that it damages their most sensitive part: self-esteem, making them weak and insecure as Western women live under constant pressure to conform to an idealized concept of beauty created. by modern society.
There’s nothing wrong with putting on makeup, or wanting to spend a year or ten brushing your hair. The problem is when this becomes the requirement to be socially accepted, to get or keep a job. If we follow Wolf, the “ PBR ” feeds on women’s insecurities and keeps them materially and psychologically poor. That’s when “beauty” rituals become condemnable.
Don’t loss “20 disparates que las mujeres hemos sufrido en nombre de la belleza” from “CulturaInquieta“.