Activist and feminist Naomi Wolf spoke in Boulder Tuesday night to an overflow audience in the student center on campus. Hundreds of women and a handful of men listened to the bestselling author explain the oppressive, profit-driven consortium that operates to hold women down – something Wolf has famously termed “The Beauty Myth.”
Wolf began her talk by pushing away the podium and strolling casually up and down the stage to admire the crowd gathered before her. Being from San Francisco, Wolf said she felt at home in a progressive town like Boulder. As she put it, “Boulder is one of those places where change happens.”
This is obviously a very familiar shtick for Wolf. It’s clear she has given the same talk many times before. And while she is an engaging speaker, her lecture lacks freshness and nuance. Wolf published her book, “The Beauty Myth,” in 1991, and it doesn’t appear she has updated her lecture since. As an audience member pointed out on Tuesday, Wolf ignores the growing myth of masculine beauty (strength, toned body, buffness) that oppresses men and makes them feel ugly and inadequate.
In order to frame her argument, Wolf outlined the tremendous gains made by women in the last 15 years. Sexual harassment laws with real teeth have been passed; women were elected in record numbers to national government; violations of the human rights of women were brought into the spotlight, including female genital mutilation and honor killings.
“It was as if the feminist fairy godmother had waved her magic speculum and given us everything on our feminist wish list,” Wolf said.
Because of the great advances in women’s rights and since women of all ages represent 53% of the world’s population, modern women should be more confident, determined and powerful than ever before, Wolf said. But there are psychological constructs blocking the way of women seeking to realize their full potential, and this is what Wolf calls the Beauty Myth.
Women are bombarded in fashion magazines and on TV with images of the feminine physical ideal, which is thin, young, large-breasted and usually blond and Caucasian. Because this pornographic ideal is constantly presented as the only desirably, sexy body out there, women’s self-esteem is tied up in how they compare.
Wolf points out that the feminine ideal has not always looked the way she does now. Wolf argues the look has to do with three powerful industries that are the primary advertisers (money talks) on TV and in fashion magazines. The average fashion model weights 30% less than the average American woman, and the feminine ideal is that skinny because the $300 billion-dollar-per-year dieting industry insists on it. Wolf maintains women wouldn’t buy dieting products – which are almost entirely ineffective - if they were comfortable with their curves. Only when women are bombarded by images of gaunt waifs do they begin to question their own bodies. And when the questioning starts, the pocket books open up to the dieting industry. The dieting industry – using their advertising dollars as weapons – insist the networks and magazines show only skinny women.
The second racket operating to maintain the Beauty Myth is the cosmetics industry. Women spend billions on anti-aging creams, which are proven ineffectual, Wolf said, but since young, wrinkle-free women are the only ones on TV and in print, normal women feel compelled to try and stave off the normal signs of aging. Again, Wolf maintains that if we saw women of all ages on TV, we’d be comfortable with getting old and therefore, we wouldn’t spend money on worthless creams. (Wolf mentioned she isn’t opposed to the use of cosmetics - she uses them herself - but she uses only sheep lanolin on her skin)!
The third part of the Beauty Myth is the cosmetic surgery industry. Since most of the bodies we see in the media are skinny and enlarged with artificial breasts, if women don’t look like that, they don’t feel sexy or desirable. (By the way, someone should check this out, but Wolf said 100% of the Victoria’s Secret models have breast implants). So to sum up, the dieting, cosmetics and plastic surgery industries cooperate to keep the feminine ideal unrealistically skinny, wrinkle-free and buxom so that normal women will feel compelled to spend their money on the industries’ products.
To make matters worse, young men are often introduced to pornography (and thus the same pornographic, feminine ideal) at a young age – many years before they have their first sexual encounter with an actual human being. The result, Wolf said, is that men have a hard time relating to real women because they’ve spent so many years relating to a fantasy woman in magazines and videos.
But in surveys, men always choose a curvier, more voluptuous body type over skinniness, so for Wolf this is proof the ideal comes from the industries mentioned above and not from real men’s expectations. She concluded her lecture by saying that the ideal serves to hold women back and prevents them from building the confidence they need to achieve their goals.
I have no doubt Wolf’s arguments are strong and sound, but I think there are other processes at work that she ignores – like the power of peer groups and the cumulative causation of eating disorders and body image problems. My favorite part of the lecture came at the end when Wolf was describing the importance of the subcutaneous fat layer. According to her, a person’s libido is regulated there.
“There’s a reason women have curves,” Wolf said excitedly. “So they can be orgasmic; So go and eat that donut for your sex life!”
