Word: wolfing
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...beauty myth of Wolf's title is reinforced, she argues, by a global industry worth billions that could be far better used for social purposes; for example, the money spent on cosmetics each year could finance 2,000 women's health clinics or pay for three times the amount of day care offered by the U.S. government. In addition, cosmetic surgery has boomed by playing on questionable ideas of health and sickness. Wolf chronicles the multiple ways that mass-culture images of women in advertising and pornography undermine female sexual self-worth. As a result of this bombardment, women learn...
...Rhodes scholar at Oxford in 1986, Wolf had planned to write about the theme of beauty in literature. The Beauty Myth began taking shape when she heard someone remark that she had won the scholarship because of her looks. Says Wolf: "I had an image of the documents I had presented to the committee -- my essay, a book of poems I had written, letters of recommendation -- and the whole of it being swept away by that one sentence." Once she learned that other female Rhodes scholars had had similar tales told about them, she developed a new theme: that discussions...
...number of other personal experiences went into the book. As a junior high school student, Wolf was anorexic, as were many of her peers. She has combined those painful memories with alarming statistics in a chapter about eating disorders titled "Hunger," which argues that those ailments can be traced to a "cult of thinness" inculcated into women at an early age. Girls will continue to starve, she warns, until they are made to feel valuable with or without the excuse of beauty...
Those personal touches have been the focus of much hostility. A reviewer for London's Independent on Sunday accused Wolf of steamrollering her experiences "into a theory which takes no account of what has been happening in the rest of the Western world." A.S. Byatt, author of the best-selling novel Possession and a former University of London lecturer, agrees that images of beauty oppress women, but she is dubious about Wolf's notion of a conscious conspiracy. Instead, she says, the beauty business is pandering to dreams...
Pioneer feminist Betty Friedan dismisses the book as an "obsolete rehash" and criticizes Wolf for dwelling on superficialities rather than coming to grips with the modern-day political challenges that confront females. While Friedan agrees that women often go to extremes in their pursuit of good looks, enduring repeated face-lifts and possibly risking their health by having silicone injected into their breasts, she thinks Wolf's book distorts the relationship between feminism and beauty. Women, she says, do not have to choose between the two, but can delight in a frivolous enjoyment of fashion without becoming a slave...