How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women
Book by Naomi Wolf
Squinting at my reflection under the unforgiving bathroom lights—those sneaky grey hairs catching the glow like tiny silver confetti, and the marionette lines settling in like they own the place. My first instinct? Fix it.
Enter The Beauty Myth, kicking down the door and asking the real question: Who profits when we’re convinced our faces need maintenance? Wolf strips the illusion bare—beauty isn’t just an aesthetic preference; it’s a currency, a discipline, a cleverly disguised hamster wheel that keeps women running but never arriving. And the price? High both time and money. Botox appointments, endless serums, the quiet exhaustion of measuring self-worth by smoothness and shine.
Is is possible to hand us the map back to our own choices. Beauty doesn’t have to be some high-stakes game; it can be something messy, fun, deeply personal, and wholly ours. Maybe I’ll dye my greys tomorrow. Maybe I won’t. Maybe the marionette lines will deepen and I’ll learn to love them—or maybe I won’t. Can i say it’s up to me? or up to some billion-dollar industry whispering insecurity into my shopping cart.
Five stars—not because The Beauty Myth solves everything, but because it hands us the tools to start asking the right questions.
https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-beauty-myth/naomi-wolf/9780099595748
