The Beauty Myth: How Images of Female Beauty Are Used Against Women. Naomi Wolf

A bestseller that redefined the attitude to beauty and female identity
In the modern world, women have more power, legal and reproductive rights, and opportunities for professional growth than ever before. But despite the obvious progress, journalist Naomi Wolfe draws attention to another, much more insidious mechanism of social control. Through eating disorders, the cult of thinness, the fear of aging, the diet industry, cosmetics, and surgery, modern women find themselves in an endless pursuit of meeting the impossible ideal of “flawless beauty.” The more rights and power women gain, the stricter the demands on their bodies. The closer they are to success, the harsher the punishment for “imperfections.” And the stronger they become on the outside, the weaker they must feel on the inside. That is why the next stage of the feminist movement depends more than ever on what they choose to see when they look in the mirror.