The Beauty Myth

How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women

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Summary

In the struggle for women's equality, there is one subject still shrouded in silence - women's compulsive pursuit of beauty. The myth of female beauty challenges every woman, every day of her life.

Naomi Wolf exposes the tyranny of the beauty myth through the ages and its oppressive function today, in the home and at work, in literature and the media, in relationships between men and women, between women and women. With pertinent and intelligent examples, she confronts the beauty industry and its advertising and uncovers the reasons why women are consumed by this destructive obsession.

Reviews

A smart, angry, insightful book, and a clarion call to freedom. Every woman should read it.
Gloria Steinem

About the author

Naomi Wolf

Naomi Wolf is a bestselling American writer, known for her advocacy of feminism and progressive politics. She studied at Yale before becoming a Rhodes Scholar at New College, Oxford, and working in Edinburgh. She became internationally famous with the publication of her first book, The Beauty Myth, in 1991, and has gone on to write many subsequent titles, including: Fire with Fire, Promiscuities, Misconceptions, The Tree House and Vagina: A New Biography.

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