beauty

Day 11: Turning Point in Your Life.
The Power of Beauty, Nancy Friday.

Enter my first* accidental foray into feminism. In my then-boyfriend's bedroom, I had inadvertently picked up a book I once saw the cool girl in my homeroom reading. But turns out in my naiveté I had misread the titles and the homeroom-cool-girl had actually been reading The Beauty Myth. That fact alone validates my homeroom girl crush, I mean, what kind of a tenth grader reads Naomi Wolf? It took me four years to finish it, embarrassingly enough. Eventually, both books would go on to have a huge impact on me, Friday's simply because it was anecdotal enough to draw me in and simple enough for a budding feminists to understand.

*No wait, or was this my first foray into feminism?

Wolf

"We can dress up for our own pleasure, but we must speak up for our rights." - Naomi Wolf.

myth

Angelica Saved by Ruggiero from the cover of The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women

I've literally been reading this book for four years, my roommate from 1st year can testify, but it's just cause I've been reading it like this, but I'm finally on the last few pages. The book is endlessly fascinating, enlightening and at times disturbing, you should most definitely read it.

"The Beauty Myth examines beauty as a demand and as a judgment upon women. Wolf examines how modern conceptions of women's beauty impact the spheres of employment, culture, religion, sexuality, eating disorders, and cosmetic surgery.

Wolf argues that women in Western culture are damaged by the pressure to conform to an idealized concept of female beauty—the Iron Maiden throughout modern society, from Victorian Times to today. She argues that the beauty myth is political, a way of maintaining the patriarchal system. It allows women to enter the labour force, but under controlled conditions. She also claims that this system keeps women under control by the weight of their own insecurities. The beauty myth is sometimes viewed as succeeding The Feminine Mystique, which relegated women to the position of housewife, as the social guard over women. In this sense, Wolf claims that public interest in a woman's virginity has been replaced by public interest in the shape of her body."

From Wikipedia.

"sweet and satisfying"

Caramel is one of the best films I've seen in a while. Beauty salons are a special place, true they do their part in holding up the Beauty Myth and drain woman's wallets but it is an intimate environment for women to bond and I love the chatter and the massages.
The first part of the film couldn't be embedded, but just go on youtube to watch the whole thing.

"On one hand, women are trained to be competitors against all others for "beauty"; on the other, when one woman - a bride, a shopper in a boutique - needs to be adorned for a big occasion, other women swoop and bustle around her in generous concentration in a team formation as effortlessly choreographed as a football play. These sweet and satisfying rituals of being all on the same team, these all-too-infrequent celebrations of shared femaleness, are some of the few shared female rituals left; hence their loveliness and power. But sadly, these delightful bonds too often dissolve when the women reenter public space and resume their isolated, unequal, mutually threatening, jealously guarded "beauty" status."
- Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth.