Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women was published in 1990 and republished in 2002 by HarperCollins with an updated introduction. At the time of its original release, The Beauty Myth was considered a seminal feminist work for its analysis of the way the market—and its consumer culture—generates and perpetuates the myth of beauty to control women on a psychological level.

This study guide refers to the 2009 HarperCollins eBook edition.

Content Warning: This book references disordered eating and domestic violence.

Plot Summary

The book comprises eight chapters. The first chapter, “The Beauty Myth,” defines the book’s subject matter and some of its key themes ranging from religion to elective cosmetic surgery. Wolf defines the beauty myth as a commodified, censored, and unreachable physical ideal to which women must adhere. The link between the beauty myth and “a long hard struggle for identity” is the main theme in this text (285). The following seven chapters analyze the way the beauty myth has spread in the West in the context of consumerism and mass culture, especially after the Industrial Revolution. These chapters are “Work,” “Culture,” “Religion,” “Sex,” “Hunger,” “Violence,” and “Beyond the Beauty Myth.” Wolf analyzes the beauty myth within these specific contexts, as well as the way these contexts interplay and overlap to enforce patriarchal beauty standards for women.

Even though the beauty myth is primarily linked to modern consumerism, the author links it to patriarchal ideas from earlier historic periods such as the biblical creation of Eve from Adam’s rib. Similarly, she traces the lucrative diet-and-exercise industry, in which women are encouraged to be perpetually hungry and fixate on food, back to traditional ideas about food and social hierarchy. According to traditions across different cultures, the most valued community members received the most food. Wolf, therefore, believes that masochistic dieting symbolically reflects women’s inferior role in the late 20th-century West.

Indeed, the more legal rights women obtained in the late 19th and 20th centuries, the more the beauty myth was used to control them in indirect and insidious ways. The author argues that many women ultimately subscribe to and perpetuate the myth to their own detriment. They struggle with feelings of guilt, shame, and inadequacy by trying to live up to an impossible ideal. She calls this ideal the Iron Maiden, named after the Medieval torture device.

In addition to psychological damage, the author locates other negative consequences of the beauty myth. These consequences include the expansion of the cosmetic surgery industry and the rise of eating disorders like bulimia and anorexia. The beauty myth also plays into institutional discrimination in the workplace where women are subjected to vague, contradictory, and gender-specific rules about their appearance. With this, Wolf considers institutional discrimination, sexual assault, intimate-partner violence, serious mental health issues, and government regulation of the beauty industries as essential battlegrounds for women’s equality.

The text includes historic references to provide a comparative analytical framework. For example, the author examines the depiction of women throughout Western art history to locate religious references and portrayals of women’s bodies before the emergence of consumer culture. She also finds many parallels between the Victorian period and the late 20th century despite significant legal advancements regarding women’s rights. These parallels range from elective surgery to attributing psychological problems to women per se, rather than analyzing the social conditions that result in such problems. Finally, Wolf examines first-, second-, and third-wave feminism to identify the political and social changes between each era, as well as their shared struggles.