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The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women - Community Reviews back

by Naomi Wolf
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Modern Reader
Modern Reader rated it 10 years ago
Naomi Wolf’s book The Beauty Myth sheds light on the detrimental nature of beauty images. Shifting from work, religion, and culture Wolf pinpoints the range of effect images have in each aspect of life. It was very interesting.
Climbing Mount TBR
Climbing Mount TBR rated it 10 years ago
Overall I like this book and found it thought provoking. The standard of beauty promoted in the west is invariably young, dangerously thin and pretty much unattainable by all but a very few. The images of what is judged to be beautiful are pervasive and these can be damaging. These images also ...
Book 7
Book 7 rated it 11 years ago
This text is a modern feminist classic and it's easy to see why. Some of it was outdated (e.g., her shock at photoshopping) and I would have liked to see more analysis of queer and trans women's experiences of the beauty myth, but for something written when I was two years old? It's powerful, and it...
Chris' Fish Place
Chris' Fish Place rated it 11 years ago
I probably should not have tried reading Mercedes Lackey’s Fire Rose after reading this book. That novel, a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, has a woman as the central character. The woman, Rose, doesn’t realize how beautiful she is and looks down her nose at other women whom she deems to have l...
Literary Ames
Literary Ames rated it 12 years ago
*Cross-posted on Goodreads and Wordpress. Naomi Wolf does not have a way with words. Dense, vague and ambiguous language; sweeping generalizations; and seeing a deeper meaning or intent where a simpler explanation is more likely and appropriate – which created a conspiratorial air that everyone, o...
Chris' Fish Place
Chris' Fish Place rated it 12 years ago
I probably should not have tried reading Mercedes Lackey’s Fire Rose after reading this book. That novel, a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, has a woman as the central character. The woman, Rose, doesn’t realize how beautiful she is and looks down her nose at other women whom she deems to have l...
Peptastic is standing still
Peptastic is standing still rated it 13 years ago
This is one of those books that you intellectually know but need reminders from time to time that a lot of our beauty ideals are mass marketed from advertisers. At least I do.It's so easy to forget when it is so engrained in our culture that stick skinny is beautiful, perfect flawless skin [not goin...
The Book Lantern
The Book Lantern rated it 14 years ago
I like a lot of what Wolf says, even if she frequently says it in the most overwrought manner possible, but I'm not sure the book completely stands up on its own merit. It's a long book, much longer than the most recent feminist pieces I've read, but for all of Wolf's trumpeting and data quoting, sh...
Tiny Library
Tiny Library rated it 14 years ago
I consider myself to be an intelligent, successful woman. At the age of twenty-four I have a very good education, a meaningful job, the respect of my colleagues, the love of my friends and family and I'm engaged to be married to a man who loves and respects me inside and out. I know all of this, b...
ayanami
ayanami rated it 14 years ago
Good arguments but presented really poorly. The first couple of chapters talk about the beauty myth like a conspiracy, as if there's a group of men holding meetings going "Hmm, how shall we make women feel inferior this time?" Naomi Wolf never clearly identifies "the oppressors" (which I infer from ...
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