The Beauty Myth Research Paper

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In this essay I will be discussing the subject beauty is difficult exploring the fashion industry’s representation of the body. In particular, focusing on fashion photography and advertising and I have decided to look at the past and present representation of the body. Beauty is defined as a combination of qualities, such as shape, colour, or form that pleases the aesthetic senses, especially the sight. Beauty changes throughout the years with many factors contributing such as movies, celebrities, music and the fashion industry.

Beauty and the ideas of what is beauty has changed over the years and is still developing today with many women changing their ideologies of what beauty is. The 1920s was the year of the flappers with many women wanting a more skinny and boyish look and wanted less of a curvy body. However this changed going into the golden ages between 1930 to 1950, actress Marilyn Monroe started to …show more content…

“The beauty myth tells a story: the quality called beauty objectively and universally exist. Women must want to embody it and men must want to possess women who embody it.”
“The qualities that a given period calls beautiful in women are merely symbols of the female behaviour that that period considers desirable: The beauty myth is always actually prescribing behaviour and not appearance” – Naomi Wolf ‘ The Beauty Myth, 1991. Wolf criticizes the fashion and beauty industry for their negative influence on both men and women and argues that women are under pressure by the “beauty myth”. Wolf writes that women should have "the choice to do whatever we want with our faces and bodies without being punished by an ideology that is using attitudes, economic pressure, and even legal judgments regarding women's appearance to undermine us psychologically and

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