The Beauty Myth Analysis

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The female body is the site of extensive theoretical discourse and intense political struggle; it has become the expressions of culture but also has become a site for social and political control. Through history the female body has been the site of discrimination, exploitation, abuse and oppression. She has also occupied a dominant position in the discourse of beauty; its imagery being pervasive and manipulated throughout literature, visual arts and religions and also the site of scientific and psychological investigation. Through historically male dominated fields of expertise and political power, the female body has become the subject to conscious and unconscious patriarchal influences. The term ‘beauty’ is synonymous with the female face and body, it is rarely applied to men in the discussion of aesthetics. Beauty is theorised across art, aesthetics, sociology, psychology, and scientific and cultural studies.xxxxxx Todays society, science and statistics teaches us that beauty leads to success; being beautiful increases chances of better jobs, better mates and more advantages though life. In a study by Dr Hamermesh (2011:[sp]) he …show more content…

Wolf argues that because women are increasingly attaining equal rights to men; such as voting, education, money and reproductive power they are challenging the historical power dynamics that enforce patriarchal dominance. As a result, she argues that the ‘beauty myth’ is the “last one remaining of the old feminine ideologies that still has the power to control those women”(1990:4). She comments further “a culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one”

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