Naomi Wolf. "The Beauty Myth"

     Women have always done things like change the way that they dress, and wear makeup to make themselves look beautiful. But, now women have a much stronger emphasis on making their bodies perfect and becoming the epitome of beauty. Naomi Wolf explains how with new rights that women have gained over the years, focus has gone from becoming a stronger more empowered woman to becoming a more beautiful woman. But what is the definition of beauty?

     One company that has always been characterized by beautiful woman is Victoria Secret. In the ad above we see a woman with what has been come to be known as the "Perfect Body," wearing Victoria Secret. This in itself created two beauty myths, one is the clothes you have to wear to be beautiful and the other is what your body has to look like to do the same.
       Anyone who knows a woman knows that clothes are very important to her. This has become more important as of late because of all this new advertising that has come for clothing that is supposed to make a woman look sexy and attractive to men. Due to all this advertising women see this clothing as what they have to have to be attractive and it causes them to go and purchase more of it.
     The myth of the "Perfect Body," has caused much more change in woman than any other myth. In today's society it is possible to see many women who will go to extremes to make their bodies exactly how they think it should be. Where do these images of the "Perfect Body" come from? They originate from commercials or advertisements like these that are shaping our image of what a woman should look like. The things that woman do to get these bodies are sometimes not very docile at all and are actually very detrimental. Eating disorders have sprung up a lot because of women who are trying to lose wait very fast. Not eating at all, or making yourself vomit after eating has been very common as of late. This is happening because some women think that if they don't look like these models that they are just plain ugly. This is not true, but it is just how the world is shaping up to be.
      Another image in this ad that woman might try to copy to become beautiful is the models hair. Long flowing hair seems to be a staple of woman in the modeling business, as you very rarely see models with short hair or even no hair. This means that a lot of woman will grow out their hair and style it to try and be like the models they see in ads. Again, the reason they do this is because the image models portray shapes our thinking into seeing that as what true beauty is. In reality, while the model may be naturally beautiful, she has also put on a lot of makeup, and hours have been spent preparing her for this photo shoot.
     Another thing that the ad is trying to portray as beauty is breast size. If you read the text on the ad it says "it still adds 2 cup sizes." This obviously shows that making your breasts appear larger would be very important to a woman. Why would this be so? Again, these ads make it seems like if you do not have large breasts that you are not a beautiful woman. To make yourself appear that you have larger breasts, they make a bra that adds cup sizes and make it appear so. This is just another aspect of the beauty myth that woman are trying to attain. There is no one standard in the world for what makes the perfect breast size, and in all honesty ever woman would be perfect in her own way. However, due to all this advertising that makes it seem as if there is only one perfect answer, women go out of their way to change themselves into becoming one of these models, who in today's society embody beauty.
     It would be very hard to find one woman that would not be flattered if you called them a model. This is exactly why many woman try to reshape themselves into looking as close to a model as possible. However this image that Victoria Secret and many other companies have made is changing women for no reason. The women in this world are beautiful as they are, but because of the images we see that is suddenly not good enough for themselves.