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BEAUTY_MYTH
December 23, 2014
February 19, 2015
February 20, 2019
FIRST13
A cursory first look at
"The Beauty Myth" (1991)
by Naomi Wolfe.
This is a book that gets
mentioned off and on that E.g. by Courtney Stoker
I've seen around forever...
ESSENTIAL_EROCOS
I was looking at the sample pages of
Eric Mark Kramer's book "The Emerging
Monoculture: Assimilation and the
'model Minority'" and I see he has a
dsscription of it included in his
chapter "A World of Cookie-Cutter
Faces":
"The beauty myth is a feminist theory by Naomi Wolfe
(1991) that exposes as delusional the claim that one set
of characteristics constitues ideal beauty. She
challenges the ideological gambit that claims for itself
the mantle of naturalism. In other words, she does not
passively accept the idea that certain looks are
'naturally', 'universally', 'objectively' beautiful
whereas others are not. Naturalizing (ethnocentric)
discourses and beliefs are pragmatically not merely
theoretically) threatening to women's self-esteem, for
the ideology suggests that all women must naturally want
to look a certain way and that men must want to possess
women who embody that look. Wolfe inists that the
elevation and privileging of some body images and
phenotypes over others is not natural but cultural
(contingently within the realm of human free will) and
therfore not beyond debate and modification. She argues
that naturalized values that are promoted as being
obvious and thus hegemonic work as counterforce against
women, keeping them controlled by a white male-dominated
society. Bottom line: the more a woman really accepts
(internalizes) this version of beauty, conscioiusly or
not (mostly unconsciously) the more she really does feel
inadequate especially because she must age in the face
of an overarching dogma of youthism."
This is all stuff I'm inclined to agree with. This
is an area where people over-rate "biology" and
forget to consider how much they regard as normal
varies across cultures and throughout history.
This is where I suspect she goes astray:
"Wolfe inists that the elevation and
privileging of some body images and
phenotypes over others is not natural
but cultural (contingently within the
realm of human free will) and therfore
not beyond debate and modification."
(1) It may very well be changeable, but
there's no reason to think it's easy to
change. We really don't know how to But then, looking at the actual
engineer cultural change, and many book (yes I know), in the new
attempts fail or meet with limited introduction from 2002, Wolf
success. immediately states that this sort
of thing is a misreading of her:
(2) It's not entirely clear there's that
much reason to *try* to make these kinds "Frequently, commentators
of changes. That Naomi Wolf (or me for ... incorrectly ... held
that matter) may disapprove of the way that I claimed women were
our culture works imposes no obligation wrong to shave their legs
on the masses to change the way they or wear lipstick. This is
think and feel-- a misunderstanding indeed,
for what I support in this
My guess: we can make some changes book is a woman's right to
to ease the burden a standard of choose what she wants to
beauty imposes on people who don't look like and what she
meet it, and those are probably wants to be, rather than
easier to do than to try to obeying what market forces
radically transform (or do away and a multibillion-dollar
with) such standards entirely. advertising industry
dictate"
That's fine: a "right to choose" is
hard to argue with... though some try:
FEMINISM_OF_CHOICE
ESSENTIAL_EROCOS
EXPLAINING_FEMINISM
I think the model is almost certainly far too
simple: the beauty industry taken as an alien
overlay on top of people's minds, an oppressor
that they need to cast off in order to live
freely.
Myself I would suggest this is all part of our
culture, which is to say it interpentrates our
identities. The beauty industry may indeed
have some power over us, but its power that
we've given it.
On stronger ground, I think, Wolf comments
approvingly about the changes between 1991
and 2002:
"Well, most satisfyingly, today you would be
hard-pressed to find a twelve-year-old girl
who is not all too familiar with the idea I submit that if you're
that 'ideals' are too tough on girls, that going to try to change
they are unnatural, and that following them our culture, this is
too slavishly is neither healthy nor cool." not a bad model:
"I would say that when what started as an Eliminating standards
outsider's argument becomes the conventional of beauty is too big a
wisdom of a Girl Scout troop, it is a sign of change, even modifying
evolution in consciousness." the standard of beauty
is tough, and projects
like that have failed
She talks about how the fad for breast a number of times--
implants has peaked (sorry)-- this comes
as news to me, but if so, this is no doubt But easing the need to
a good thing. meet that standard,
reducing it's range of
The role pornography plays in influence... in retro-
this story seems a little spect, it seems no
strange: She attributes the surprise that that
90s breast implant fad to the was more workable.
influence of porn. But now
(circa 2002):
"The influence of pornography on
women's sexual sense of self ...
has now become so complete that is
is almost impossible for younger So, porn is still riding
women to distinguish the role high, and more influential
pornography plays in creating their than ever, and yet breast
idea how to be, look and move in sex implants are on the
from their own innate sense of wane... so I would wonder
sexual identity." if it was ever really the
source of the implant fad.
I mean, what about
comic books?
The real thing that amazes me is to have Naomi
Wolf use phrases like "their own inate sense of
sexual identity" as though there is such a
thing. Standards of beauty are culturally
relative, but sexual identity isn't?
Naomi Wolf is convinced she can see this core of the
true reality hidden beneath all those pernicious
influences like pornography and the fashion industry,
and if we could only eliminate these things the True
Culture would shine forth...
I think she's on stronger ground again in her
closing remarks about the scene in 2002:
"Today, many women have a sense of a measure
of freedom to dress up or down, put on
lipstick or take it off, flaunt themselves
or wear sweats-- even-- even, sometimes to
gain or lose weight-- without fearing that
their value as a woman or their seriouisness
at a person is at stake. "
The idea that this vision has come true is perhaps
a bit optimistic, but as an ideal who could object? And someday, women may
even be able to look at
But there there was a time when self-described pornography if they
*feminists* objected-- in particular the 70s feel like it without
feminists who were pushing for a dressed-down being hit with a club
unisex ideal, where lipstick and dresses were labeled "feminism".
regarded as forbidden.
LESBIAN_SEPRATIST_RADIO
Naomi Wolf, as she stated her thesis in 1991:
"The beauty myth tells a story: The quality called
'beauty' objectively and universally exists. Women must
want to embody it and men must want to possess women who
embody it. 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. Women's
beauty must correlate to their fertility, and since this
system is based on sexual selection, it is inevitable and
changeless."
"None of this is true. [...]"
She continues:
"'Beauty' is not universal or changeless, though the West
pretends that all ideals of female beauty stem from one
Platonic Ideal Woman; the Maori admire a fat vulva, and
the Padung, droopy breasts. Nor is 'beauty' a function of
evolution: Its ideals change at a pace far more rapid than
the evolution of species, and Charles Darwin was himself
unconvinced by his own explanation that 'beauty' resulted
from a 'sexual selection' that deviated from the rule of
natural selection; for women to compete with women through
'beauty' is a reversal of the way in which natural
selection affects all other mammals. Anthropology has
overturned the notion that females must be 'beautiful' to
be select to mate: Evelyn Reed, Elaine Morgan, and others
have dismissed sociobiological assertions of innate male
polygamy and female monogamy. ... "
So that's all good stuff-- it's the
kind of material I was hoping to find
in this book.
But in the midsts of it all is a
passage I've elided with a [...] that runs like this:
"'Beauty' is a currency system like the gold
standard. Like any economy, it is determined
by politics, and in the modern age in the West
it is the last, best belief system that keeps
male dominance intact. In assigning value to
women in a verical hierarchy according to a
culturally imposed physical standard, it is an
expression of power relations in which women
must unnaturally compete for resources that men
have appropriated for themselves."
I have to say that this great
patriarchial conspiracy stuff really It is however kind-of fascinating
rubs me the wrong way-- not that that that she's paralleling the
counts as a counter-argument (and some argument against free market
would assume it means you're on the libertarianism-- those guys
right track). often act like The Market is
some natural phenomena, an
act of god that the government
Anyway, the thing is that this "beauty must not dare to touch.
myth" isn't wrong Because Patriarchy,
it's wrong because it's wrong. If it's
also being used by some nefarious
conspiracy (patriarchal or otherwise)
that's bad, but it's a separate issue.
Naomi Wolf has some good material here,
but she switches constantly between
being evidenced-based and just making
assertions... many of her assertions
are plausible enough, others slide
back into the patriarchal conspiracy
model:
"... It claims to be about intimacy
and sex and life, a celebration of women.
It is actually composed of emotional And I can see why
distance, politics, finance, and sexual people had the
repression. The beauty myth is not about impression she was
women at all. It is about men's anti lipstick and
institutions and institutional power." skirts...
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