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Title: The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women
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Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
List Price: $14.95
Our Price: $8.44
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| Customer Reviews: |
| The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women by Harper Perennial interesting and well researched | | I'm not an expert in feminist literature and don't have any strong opinions on the subject. I found this to be a very interesting read, though quite a bit of it bordered on the unpleasant and the disturbing--rape, violence, surgical violation of the body. It also treads the line between the scholarly and the general interest book, although it's probably much closer to the latter. Very well written, it felt a bit tragic, poetic, philosophical, and almost Freudian in style. A general criticism: could it be that some women seek to beautify themselves, even in an extreme manner, somewhat independent of modern societal, or patriarchical, influences? An evolutionary biologist might argue that some if not most women might have an emphasis on beauty that is hardwired into their brains, and we are simply observing a manifestation of that inherent nature in the modern environment. Author of Adjust Your Brain: A Practical Theory for Maximizing Mental Health. | | The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women by Harper Perennial What makes it a myth? | I bought this book to further explore the idea of the "beauty myth". Though the book is informative, it is very one sided. I even agree with most of the stuff, but i feel it needs to be backed up with information and facts that may dispute the authors point of view. It would of been more interesting if not so one-sided. The way the information is presented, and all the research that had been done, it doesn't appear to be a myth at all. So i read another book that contains both sides of the story, and the fact of the matter is women very much participate in the ideals of our own beauty, if not presently working in the business finding it as a "creative" outlet. The book is very informative, if you are to read it for a book report, but not very captivating.
| | The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women by Harper Perennial Well researched and eye-opening! | A very well researched book and quite "thick", in that as a woman reading it, there were so many things to digest that would not go down easily. The prison in which women live now is inside their bodies, and though the patriarchal society built the walls, we women continue to maintain it. This well researched book comes to show us the multiple levels of which our prison is built, and by that offers us freedom.
Read this book for your own sake and that of your daughters. Sleeping beauties, it's time to wake up! | | The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women by Harper Perennial Brilliant and life changing | | I picked up this book by accident and literally every other page am surprised by how many things are relevant in my own life. A fascinating look at our culture, and the many unquestioned "truths" used to place a higher value on female beauty than male beauty. I would be interested in the authors take on the metrosexual movement that has emerged in the 10 years since she has written the book, and how that would fit into her arguments. But this is a book I will be buying for my my Mother, sister, and close girlfriends. An important book for men to read as well. | | The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women by Harper Perennial New revised version supposedly has all the lies removed | In a Stalinesque move that would have impressed him, Wolf has quietly edited out all the false statistics and bogus claims of the original book and released the leftovers. No mention of this deception is given anywhere in the book, like when Stalin would remove people from photos and pretend they had never existed in history. Ha Ha! Nice try Wolf. It IS embarrassing being publicly exposed as a liar, isn't it? Maybe stick to facts the next time. Whoever is impressed by this bilge deserves to be misled, and will continue to be misled until they educate themselves with facts, or raise their intellects so as to be able to separate fact from fantasy. It would have won her a doctorate in Creative Statistics if it was an area of academic study. The problem with many of the 5 star voters of this book is that hatred too often leads to outrageous statements that can be accepted as fact only by fellow haters. Hatred distorts one's mental evaluative machinery, which is only too evident when one looks at works by fellow heterophobics Mary Daly, Andrea Dworkin, Susan Faludi, etc. The Germans made use of this principle well in the 1930s and 40s too, and it also worked here for a while.
Does Naomi Wolf realize yet that she has done more damage to the women's movement than help it in any way? The ammunition she has provided to men's groups has been like manna from heaven, as it is so easily disproved (see Christina Hoff-Sommers) and her thinking is sadly representative of a generation of women who have grown up with the distorted, 50% view of reality seen through a pair of feminist-colored spectacles. They earnestly believe they can make up statistics and get away with it like they get away with everything else in the society they grew up in. Well, a wake-up call for you, Wolf. Objective truth is no respecter of the hypocrisies of feminism and political correctness. Time will see your drivel condemned to the world's literary garbage bin where it belongs, where it will nestle comfortably with similar drivel from Daly, Dworkin, Steinem, MacKinnon, Faludi and other mysandronists. | | The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women by Harper Perennial Product Description | The bestselling classic that redefined our view od the relationship between beauty and female identity. In today's world, women have more power, legal recognition, and professional success than ever before. Alongside the evident progress of the women's movement, however, writer and journalist Naomi Wolf is troubled by a different kind of social control, which, she argues, may prove just as restrictive as the traditional image of homemaker and wife. It's the beauty myth, an obsession with physical perfection that traps the modern woman in an endless spiral of hope, self-consciousness, and self-hatred as she tries to fulfill society's impossible definition of "the flawless beauty." | | The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women by Harper Perennial Amazon.com | | In a country where the average woman is 5-foot-4 and weighs 140 pounds, movies, advertisements, and MTV saturate our lives with unrealistic images of beauty. The tall, nearly emaciated mannequins that push the latest miracle cosmetic make even the most confident woman question her appearance. Feminist Naomi Wolf argues that women's insecurities are heightened by these images, then exploited by the diet, cosmetic, and plastic surgery industries. Every day new products are introduced to "correct" inherently female "flaws," drawing women into an obsessive and hopeless cycle built around the attempt to reach an impossible standard of beauty. Wolf rejects the standard and embraces the naturally distinct beauty of all women. |
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