The Beauty Myth

In the final chapter of her book, Wolf provides constructive solutions to challenge the beauty myth. She proposes asking far-reaching questions, such as “What is a woman?” and “What is beauty?” Discussing a woman’s full identity rather than reducing it to commodified looks would be a good start. Beauty, then, should be “noncompetitive, nonhierarchical, and nonviolent” (286).

Wolf argues in favor of respecting the boundaries of a woman’s body rather than subjecting it to unnecessary social pressures. She also suggests that beauty and sexuality should be decoupled. Wolf believes that mass culture and advertisements are damaging to female sexuality. At the same time, she is quick to point out that she is not opposed to the pleasure of makeup and fashionable clothing. The problem for her is that women are not given real choices about how to present and express themselves. For example, makeup is not problematic per se, but feeling inadequate without it is. Beauty advertisers continue to use censorship by only showing specific faces and bodies, and therefore offer no real choice.

The other problem with the beauty myth is the false dichotomy that reduces women to two-dimensional characters or stereotypes: beautiful or serious, not both.