August 2024

In 1991, feminist scholar Naomi Wolf published The Beauty Myth, a giant and daring work of nonfiction that put to paper the oppressive beauty ideals of the day. It cleverly traced the links between patriarchy, the ideals peddled in contemporary promoting and pornography and increased pressures for girls to get surgery alongside rising numbers of eating disorder diagnoses.  “Western economies are absolutely depending on the continued underpayment of girls,” she wrote within the introduction. “An ideology that makes women feel ‘value less’ was urgently needed to counteract the way in which feminism had begun to make us feel value more.” Gloria Steinem praised the book, while the likes of Camille Paglia criticised it heavily. Today, greater than half a dozen books later...