The Beauty Myth - Work

It was the Friday afternoon that break got out, and I had to wait for my little brother to get out of his after-school activity. I had time to kill, so I decided to start reading our new book The Beauty Myth. Right as I brought it out of my bag and set it on the table, I heard a voice behind me say, "The beauty myth? What? There isn't a beauty myth." I turned around to meet a boy who is in one of my classes. "Actually, yeah there is. They're referring to society's constraints and expectations that are put on women about their appearance. How it makes women insecure, this myth that they need to look a certain way for acceptance and success."

He laughed. "There is no such thing as a beauty myth." 

"Uh, yes there is," I frowned, not sure if he was serious or not.

"No, there's not. It's stupid, it's made up." He was serious. I found myself getting angry, trying to find words that wouldn't sound too harsh but would convey what I wanted to say.

"Well, yes there is. And the fact is that when people deny that there is a beauty myth, it only reinforces the fact that there is one. If it never gets talked about or recognized, then it just goes on keeping women contained within its lies."

"Bull****." He rolled his eyes.

"Well, I am sorry you feel that way. But it is people like you who are the reason the beauty myth exists. I'm going to get back to reading now." 

Okay, so I was a bit harsh, but I couldn't explain why his comment made me so angry. When I started reading the book and thinking about it, I realized that it is because whether we choose to recognize it or not, all women are somehow constrained by the Beauty Myth, that "there is a dispiriting climate of confusion, division, cynicism, and above all, exhaustion" (Wolf 10). Myself included. 

Being held under the beauty myth is exhausting.

Society has so many standards. And for woman, the first and foremost of those is beauty. The beauty industry is a multi-billion dollar industry. Makeup, hair products, clothing, cosmetic surgery, the diet industry, all of these are intricate strings of the web that the beauty myth weaves, ready to catch women as they go through life. The further and further they go, the more and more they become entangled in the sticky web. Think about it. As children, young girls have a freedom and security that can be directly connected to childhood innocence/ignorance. As they are exposed to more and more of society's expectations, that security is eroded away, until "there is a secret "underlife" poisoning our freedom;infused with notions of beauty, it is a dark vein of self-hatred, physical obsessions,  terror of aging, and dread of lost control" (Wolf 10).

We all want to be the most beautiful. We alter and change our bodies in order to fit this "culturally imposed physical standard" (Wolf 12). We painstakingly spend hours slathering our faces with creams and powder and goop to look NOT like ourselves. We undergo dangerous surgeries to defy our genetic makeup. 

What's the worst part about it? No one even recognizes it's happening.