6/10/2023 0 Comments The beauty myth vintage wolf![]() The bigger problem, however, reverts back to mass media: Who decides what is beautiful and do women have any agency under either feminist model? Naomi Wolf’s best-selling book, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women (1990), develops a theory of the “beauty myth” whereby Wolf contends: “Just as the beauty myth did not really care what women looked like as long as women felt ugly, we must see that it does not matter in the least what women look like as long as we feel beautiful.” Posing a challenge to second-wave feminism which claims that standards of beauty are patriarchal imperatives which oppress women, Wolf’s book contends that beauty is the “last, best belief system that keeps male dominance intact,” maintaining that beauty is something women can hook into in order to empower themselves. Why does media have such a big impact on our ideas of beauty such that a generation went out to spend its money on Farrah Fawcett posters to the tune of making it the biggest-selling poster of all time? And how is it that media, to include new media today, can influence a generation to commodify the self? ![]()
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