The Beauty Myth

In the “Sex” chapter of The Beauty Myth, Wolf addresses several themes including the relationship between religion and sex, patriarchal societal norms and gender roles, and the way pornography, sex, and romantic relationships are portrayed in mass culture. She links the rise of “beauty pornography,” in which female beauty is linked to sexuality, with the growing desensitization toward violent imagery that features women as targets in music, film, and advertisements. Ultimately, there are real-life consequences to this desensitization such as the troubling rates of date rape and intimate-partner violence.

First, Wolf argues that religious guilt suppresses both women’s enjoyment of sex and female sexuality in general. There are several historic examples across the world ranging from clitoridectomies to chastity belts. The author suggests that patriarchal societies view women’s sexuality as a problem, and the new religion of commodified beauty maintains the tradition of eliminating their sexuality altogether. However, unlike these direct methods, the beauty myth primarily relies on human psychology in which women are conditioned to replicate the beauty myth’s tenets themselves.

The author provides several examples of seemingly innocuous products like Reebok shoes or Triton showers, which feature nude, female torsos in various suggestive poses linked to softcore pornography: These images link positive, sexual feelings with the given product, indicating that women must consume these products to feel sexual pleasure.