The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women - by Naomi Wolf
Removed from both Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk - Sun 24 May 2009
My copy says 'Vintage 1991', 27th impression. I'd guess Wolf gets 50p a copy. References are collected at the back, listed by page; generally they are simple book titles. Page numbers in those books aren't given, so the reader, if inquisitive, has a bit of burrowing to do. None of the references dated later than 1991, as far as I could find; maybe after the 1990 edition was edited, it's been reprinted unchanged. Salaries therefore seem very low. Wolf is described online as having modelled for a magazine, and as being married to a magazine publisher. This is a bit of a warning to women who may be taken in by this book - if you think no makeup etc is the way to go - Wolf doesn't!
Many people are aware publishing in the USA is Jewish-dominated; this is part of the key to this book. I suspect some dogsbody was told to visit a reference library, maybe in New York - supplemented by some English feminist writings, and magazines - and told to find statistics, real or imagined, on anorexia, plastic surgery, fraudulent claims of cosmetics, rape figures, laws on sex discrimination, pornography, and so on. (Obviously, omitting taboos around race, censorship, money, war, and so on!)
The 'myth' of the title isn't used to mean that 'beauty' is mythical. (The title I'd guess was chosen to arouse curiosity). It's a 'myth' in the sense that beauty, in the promoted sense, is unattainable and out of reach. Wolf says the myth intentionally weakens and unbends women's power impulses and abilities. Some Amazon reviewers think the book changed their thoughts, or even their lives, but it's hard to believe anyone could be quite that unreflective. After all, girls are aware of the idea of desirable rich men from an early age and are perfectly aware of women as rivals and all the other related issues.
Some reviewers think this book is a serious attempt to put forward a reasoned argument. It isn't. It's to make money, probably (I'd guess) from the goyim. Any old rubbish goes in, provided it can be dressed up sensationally. There's a bit of anthropology and monkey behaviour, which may, or may not, be accurate, and some science, which, also, may or may not be accurate. Wolf's skill, such as it is, is to invent or find keywords and phrases ('PBQ', 'iron maiden', 'beauty myth', 'object lessons' meaning women as objects, 'cultural conspiracies' etc etc).
Any ideal is liable to corrosion and corruption. Think of 'democracy', 'state education', 'national health service', 'political union', 'universal suffrage'. I take it many or most people support feminism in the sense of encouraging independent free-thinking women, as opposed to bullied breeding-machines, or drudges, or hopelessly uneducated. But Wolf is remote from that. For example she agonises over women being unwanted for TV journalism [p 34]. It doesn't occur to Wolf that a team of one male and one female is competitive not just for women, but for men too. That's if they want to do the work: "I won't be pretty enough to do the news" agonises someone - essentially they are actresses reading out censored rubbish, to which again Wolf shows no sign of objection.
Wolf several times [e.g. p 17] quotes figures:
$33 billion diet and thinness industry
$20 billion cosmetics
$7 billion porn
$0.3 billion cosmetic surgery
Frivolous expenditure of course is men's fault. There's material on violence: for example Wolf pretends surgery is 'violent'. I'll spare the detail. For those interested in the actual thesis of the 'beauty myth' linking female power with unreal images of women, here are some bits of evidence:-
1918-1925: 'dieting ... female preoccupation when Western women received the vote around 1920' [p 184]
1939-1945 women responded and took men's higher paid work [63]
1945-1990: 'women swelled the work force' [p 21] they were immigrants 'feared for .. grueling work at low pay' [p 21]/ 22 women work twice as hard as men./ women have always been paid less than men for equal work [p 48]/ 23 a pakistani woman spends 63 hours a week on domestic work [p 23]/ 'awesome potential of this immigrant group must be thwarted' [p 25]
1965 'Twiggy appeared in .. Vogue .. simultaneous with the advent of the pill'
1970s 'women streaming into the professions' 33
1980s for every feminist action there is an equal and opposite beauty myth reaction [p 28]
1960-1990 woman lawyers, judges, doctors, engineers etc 7 to 25 times more [my figures]/ but women ... know that achievement is considered ugly and punished... [p 30]
1980-1990 '.. women breached the power structure; .. eating disorders rose exponentially and cosmetic surgery became the fastest-growing medical specialty.' [p 10]
1990: 'Western economies are absolutely dependent now on the continued underpayment of women.'
It's simple-minded stuff... However, she did get a marriage and presumably money from it! Her website is naomiwolf.org - see what she's up to now.