A review by adalove
The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women by Naomi Wolf

5.0

My first delve into Naomi was with reading her more controversial work "Vagina", since I picked it up in a thrift store from recognizing her name, but quickly had to drop it for both its gender essentialism and how it appeared to diminish non-cishet relationships, that definitely wasn't a book for me (a trans girl in a relationship with a cis girl)... But I thoroughly enjoyed reading this. There were many quotes in here that I had to show my partner, and many different parts of this had me challenging my preconceived notions, as well as lifting up myself and my partner through helping to destroy the lens that advertising/etc had pushed on us for how we were "supposed to look", which is inherently a toxic lens, and one that's perpetuated often for the purposes of selling us solutions to our "flaws". This book gave me a much healthier idea of beauty, as well as a great look at how the system was put in place to undermine ourselves.