The Beauty Myth
The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women is a nonfiction book by Naomi Wolf, published in 1991 by William Morrow and Company. It was republished in 2002 by HarperPerennial with a new introduction by Wolf.
The basic premise of The Beauty Myth is that as women have gained increased social power and prominence, expected adherence to standards of physical beauty has grown stronger for women.
Famous quotes containing the words the beauty, beauty and/or myth:
“The past is interesting not only for the beauty which the artists for whom it was the present were able to extract from it, but also as past, for its historical value. The same goes for the present. The pleasure which we derive from the representation of the present is due not only to the beauty in which it may be clothed, but also from its essential quality of being present.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“The man Shelley, in very truth, is not entirely sane, and Shelley’s poetry is not entirely sane either. The Shelley of actual life is a vision of beauty and radiance, indeed, but availing nothing, effecting nothing. And in poetry, no less than in life, he is “a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain.””
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)
“The myth of black women profiting at the expense of black men is the oldest rap around.”
—Johnnetta Betsch Cole (b. 1936)