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The Beauty Myth |
Borrowed from http://www.postmodernhousecleaning.com |
The images of women in media have been created upon the male standard for beauty known as the beauty myth. The beauty myth preaches that every woman needs to strive and pursue the embodiment of ideal physical beauty in order to be successful in male-controlled society. The Beauty Myth has always existed, but has not been publicly acknowledged until now. The Beauty Myth describes the relations between female liberation and beauty. “The more legal and material hindrances women have broken through, the more strictly and heavily and cruelly images of female beauty have come to weight upon [them].” [35] This myth has stirred up feelings of self-hatred, superficial fascinations, fears of growing old, inadequacy, and shame. The prevalence of the Beauty Myth has caused women to lose control of their own perceptions of beauty and their true identities. Decades before, a woman’s place was in the home and her role was wife. Today, the thin, young model has replaced that standard. This sexual revolution “promoted the discovery of female sexuality; “beauty pornography”—which for the first time in women’s history artificially links a commodified “beauty” directly and explicitly to sexuality—invaded the mainstream to undermine women’s new and vulnerable sense of sexual self-worth.” [35] The Beauty Myth is a story in itself. The story is that “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.” [35] The Beauty Myth is about men and their institutions and power. Aging is seen as unbeautiful because women grow more powerful with time. Men create designated roles for women to limit and restrain that power. The fear of aging has increased as a result. Although society has evolved, beauty has remained the same. Beauty is “inert, timeless, and generic.” [35] It has existed since the beginning of time and will continue to exist. |
| The media is the main critic of feminine beauty because it has “increasingly become the source to which seekers turn for the repertoire of symbols, values, and ideas to be used in constructing—or affirming—meaning and identity.” [33] The media constantly portrays the perfect woman as one with a gorgeous dolled-up face, a small figure with curves in the right places, and a never-aging body. The goal of advertisements is to continuously make women feel physically incomplete in order for her to spend tons of money on useless products. These ads aim to make women resent the current state of their appearance, but also succeed in making them feel guilty, unwanted, and self-conscious. The real reason behind women’s weight issues is that “female fat is the subject of public passion, and women feel guilty about female fat, because we implicitly recognize that under the myth, women’s bodies are not our own but society’s, and that thinness is not a private aesthetic, but hunger a social concession exacted by the community. A cultural fixation on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty but an obsession about female obedience.” [35] The beauty myth determines how well a woman follows male wishes and desires. Women strive to reach a thinner physique and constantly expose themselves to self-mutilation such as bulimia, anorexia, and other eating disorders. The beauty standard “makes an eating disease seem inevitable, even desirable, if a young woman is to consider herself sexual and valuable.” [35] Society deems it appropriate to determine a woman’s worth based on the extent of her physical beauty and maintenance of her body. |
Borrowed from http://advice-static.eharmony.com |
Borrowed from http://www.courses.psu.edu |
The beauty myth is a scam to encourage women to spend frivolously. In order to successfully make money, “to convince a woman, an ad must appeal to her need to please the male oppressor.” [34] Images presented in media “encourage men to expect women to sport all the latest trappings of sexual slavery—expectations women must then fulfill if they are to survive.” [34] This powerful scam “generates low self-esteem for women and high profits for corporations as a result.” [35] The media “promises to tell women what men truly want, what faces and bodies provoke men’s fickle attentions,” but these statements are “actually what their advertisers want from women.” [35] Advertisements are created to diminish a woman’s self-worth in order to convince her to buy the latest products and trends to become a part of society once again. This cycle starts over again once the new season’s materials take flight. A woman can never be truly happy with her appearance because advertisements are constantly aiming to disrupt the notion of female beauty in order to raise statistical sales and profits. Society has taken advantage of lashing out at female beauty in order to reap the financial assets and benefits. The beauty myth is not about women, but about “men’s institutions and institutional power,” causing women to want to embody it and men to “want to possess women who embody it.” [35] Wolf states that “the qualities that a given period calls beautiful in women are merely symbols of the female behavior that that period considers desirable” and that the beauty myth is prescribing behavior, not appearance. [35] Women give men power by internalizing the beauty myth. Men have established the beauty myth to keep women in their prescribed sphere and in order to maintain their control over society. |
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