The Beauty Myth

There is no legitimate historical or biological justification for the beauty myth; what it is doing to women today is a result of nothing more exalted than the need of today’s power structure, economy, and culture to mount a counteroffensive against women.

“Femininity” is code for femaleness plus whatever a society happens to be selling. If “femininity” means female sexuality and its loveliness, women never lost it and do not need to buy it back.

Ideal beauty is ideal because it does not exist: The action lies in the gap between desire and gratification. Women are not perfect beauties without distance. That space, in a consumer culture, is a lucrative one.

The thirty-year education of the young in sex as stylish objectification or sadomasochism may have produced a generation that honestly believes that sex is violent and violence is sexual, so long as the violence is directed against women.

Men take this core for granted in themselves: We see that, sanctioned by the culture, men’s sexuality simply is. They do not have to earn it with their appearance. We see that men’s desire precedes contact with women.

The myth freezes the sexual revolution to bring us full circle, evading sexual love with its expensive economic price tag.

Serious lovers and fathers would be unwilling to believe the standard propaganda of militarism: that their wives and children would benefit from their heroic death.

In the 1980s it was evident that as women became more important, beauty too became more important. The closer women come to power, the more physical self-consciousness and sacrifice are asked of them.

What is a nominally meritocratic system faced with, as women knock at its doors?

If interwoven in a resilient network spanning the generations, women’s hard work would disproportionately multiply female excellence.

Even with two shifts, at this rate, they would still challenge the status quo. Someone had to come up with a third shift fast.