thinness as a political sedative
So, I lied.
On my accumulating nonfiction post, I talked about going on a themed journey re all of the unread nonfiction books I have on my shelves. I mentioned Sophie Gilbert's Girl on Girl and how that was going to serve as my anchor text for this journey. Well, I did read it! And with it, I realized I needed to go back a few decades.
The beauty myth by Naomi Wolff is considered a seminal text on how “images of beauty are used against women” (literally in the book’s subtitle). It shows up, several times, as one of Gilbert's references throughout Girl on Girl, so I thought it'd be a good idea for me to pick it up so I could understand some points a little better.
A very poor summary: the work addresses various issues regarding how the beauty industry operates to keep women submissive—even while claiming otherwise—and reinforces aesthetic standards that are often established by men/the patriarchy.
Early in the book, Wolf presents the shift in the “ideal” female body standard (from curves to a linear shape) as a direct response to women entering positions and spaces traditionally considered male in large numbers. The preoccupation with dieting itself emerged just as Western women won the right to vote.
Personally, I find it very interesting that we've recently been seeing so many famous female artists appear extremely thin. Just skin and bones, sometimes. We're almost 10 years away from #MeToo going viral and bringing up some very important conversations (and crimes!) to light.
In other words, as women fight for a modicum of freedom and autonomy, patriarchal society responds by creating a new prison: their own bodies. In Wolf’s words: “the more legal and material obstacles women have overcome, the more rigid, heavy, and cruel the images of female beauty imposed upon us have become.”
That is the beauty myth.
(I'm not going to do into details on late 90s-early 2000s heroin chic ressurgence. I was there. I survived it with minor trauma. It makes me mad as hell it's become a goal again.)
The beauty myth, when linked to thinness, makes women feel guilty for eating—for “overindulging” or “crossing the line.” In recent years, this guilt and body-related anxiety have come to permeate the childhood and adolescence of many people, courtesy of social media. When one is drowning in a sea of negative feelings about one’s own body, there is no time to pay attention to other things. There is no time to fight for oneself or for others. What remains is passivity, exhaustion, and weakness. And, of course, society reinforces every minute of this image.
This standard brings with it, above all else, fragility. A fragility that implies a need for care and infantilization. A fragility that demands obedience. A fragility that casts women as decorative objects, displayed solely to look beautiful in the eyes of others. By others, I mean men.
Naomi Wolf identifies this “beauty” as something objective. Women are expected to take responsibility for achieving this standard, while men “are supposed to want to possess women” who embody it. The body becomes a form of currency in a society that operates on the oppression and subjugation of women; a subjugation that, furthermore, imposes a body type devoid of curves: straight and child-like.
And that is where we must ask ourselves: whom does this serve?
I get a really icky feeling when I try to answer that question, so I'm going to link to Final Girl Digital's video on the subject: Pretty Babies: Exploring Epstein & The Beauty Industry.