Naomi Wolf “Beauty Myth”

Naomi Wolf “Beauty Myth”

Text and illustration: Blog Between the Legs

Russian version

“I woke up in a country where lovers seized power. They issued laws according to which everyone should look at each other, and the orgasm should never end”. Morten Søndergog (translated fr om Danish – Valentin Emelin).

Summer. Russia. Two thousand twenty one. I. An almost white, cisgender, heterosexual man of thirty-one, who has a classical higher art education, which means he has the audacity to assert to have some expertise in matters of beauty, earning his bread and butter with pornographic pictures, while working as an illustrator in the adult industry, he took on reading and comprehending the international bestseller, which has become practically the anthem of feminism, a bestseller that attacks the beauty and pornography industries. All this about the book by Naomi Wolf “The Myth of Beauty”. It is objectively a controversial book already because the controversy around it is a historical fact.

Important notice. In the introduction to the fourth edition of the book, the author acknowledges that he receives a large number of letters of thanks. Including thanks for the fact that reading this book helped the readers to get rid of eating disorders. I truly believe in the importance of targeted assistance. The fact that helping one, two, ten or a thousand specific people is more important than writing an infallible theoretical work.

But I also know that getting rid of illusions, delusions and ghosts, including harmful illusions, is a process that can never stop. Not because “there is no limit to perfection” – throw this stupid and neurotic formula out of your head (this is partly what the book is about). But only because the very public speech, the very form of open public utterance (and every book is an example of this form) is arranged in such a way that, debunking one myth, you involuntarily generate another, killing one ghost, you become the cause of the appearance of a new one. A good analogy here is a course of antibiotics for severe illness. It is very important after the course of treatment to drink another course, having absorbed toxins, remove the negative effects of these same antibiotics fr om the body, and restore balance. The detoxification course can neither precede the course of treatment for the original disease, nor replace it. Perhaps you should read Naomi Wolf in this two thousand twenty-first year. And only after that, you should thoroughly cleanse yourself of much of what will be discussed below.

But first, about the benefits. The book tells the history of American popular culture and social policy of the second half of the twentieth century through the prism of ideas about female beauty.

And most importantly, beauty itself is problematized in it. Fr om the area of a purely aesthetic concept, it is reasonably introduced into economic and political discourse in the same way as the concept of labor was problematized in the nineteenth century (which was not obvious to earlier thinkers, who operated only with the concept of wealth, without noticing the direct dependence of the hard coin on working hours). In an absolutely Marxist way, Naomi Wolf shows the tangibility and accountability of beauty in the commodity exchange and political life of society, and most importantly, the mechanisms of alienating this resource fr om their rightful owners. Capitalism alienates labor and the proletarian, and it does exactly the same with the same tools with a woman and her beauty. The shortest description of the book: a historical chronicle of the alienation of beauty.

And, like the slogan “proletarians of all countries unite”, the refrain of the book sounds a call for the unification of women, a call for liberation and the building of a communistically free society of equal love. And then someone will distort from this analogy. It is in Russia. With her, this country, history.

History teaches. But not in the sense in which it is customary to understand it when discussing a new tendentious textbook. History teaches not how to act, and certainly not that certain groups of people (peoples, genders, classes) have always acted this way and only this way, which means they will do the same in the future. History does not even teach who was to blame in the past. And of course, history teaches not that everything is learned in comparison (they say, we still live very well, if we look back in time or across the ocean). History, ethnography, and even ethology (the science of animal behavior) teach to problematize the self-evident. Exactly this and nothing more. To understand that here – in this place, in this social phenomenon, it used to be different, maybe in another way. That there is nothing for granted, which should not be thought over slowly and carefully, and maybe changed in our present.

Summer two thousand twenty-one in Russia. An eerie chapter of this book, if you read it in this space-time: a short chapter, a chapter that simply lists specific judgments against women over the years. Absurd, contradicting each other, common sense and post-war understanding of law, monstrous court decisions. When Naomi Wolf talks about big business, politics, culture, if you want, you can get into an argument with her. We have not heard any private conversations between capitalists and senators. But the decisions of the courts, the arguments of the defense not accepted for consideration, the idiotic wording of the accusation – all these are documents of real history. A story that looks more like today’s absolutely caricatured fantastic dystopia. It just couldn't be. But it was so. And the worst thing is that it was perceived as something natural.

An equally frightening enumeration: the story of lost money. The story of how women's magazines lost specific advertising contracts cost them, these magazines, to start publishing something a little more intellectual than curling lessons. And this is also a documented story. Chronicle of financial flows.

And statistics and documents related to the history of cosmetology, dietetics and plastic surgery are reasonably compared with the facts of the history of concentration camps, occupied territories and inhuman experiments during World War II. Scary, awakening facts.

It was about the good. Now about the harm, about those toxins that need to be removed from the body after ingestion of the book “The Myth of Beauty”.

Try to read it not substantively, not by facts, but structurally. Look at exactly how the internal logic of this book works. And to your horror, you will discover that this is conspiracy journalism. That is, books related to her, genetically indistinguishable twin sisters, are not books on feminist theory or cultural studies, but, for example, bestsellers from the shelf of fake history. Something about a worldwide conspiracy, wh ere the reptilians are trying to wipe out from the memory of mankind the truth that the Slavs built the pyramids.

This book contains absolutely all the signs of conspiracy masterpieces. First, a clear and understandable, one-step, everything in the world explaining the concept of a worldwide conspiracy. The conspirators themselves, and their motives, and their ultimate goals, and all their methods are known. Everything is declared to be malicious manipulation. Not even manipulation, but undeclared war. And subsequently, throughout the entire book, militaristic metaphors are actively exploited (although it is patriarchy that is declared the source of the romance of militarism). The reader is called to fight, to the barricades, to take a side in the final battle between good and evil. I am not saying now that it is not necessary to fight in the field of activism, that there is no deliberate conspiracy of lobbyist groups. But only that the structure and form of the statement in this book fully corresponds to a certain genre. Alas, the genre is extremely dubious.

The second direct hit in the canon of conspiracy journalism is the greed of rhetoric. Wolfe tries his best, by all means, to convince the reader of the urgent need for a general and personal revolution against the alienation of beauty. All means and arguments are good. And therefore, having given, for example, some indisputable fact that compromises the system of a document, on one page of the book she will argue that such discrimination is an absolutely unique phenomenon that developed precisely in the second half of the twentieth century, as a deliberate and malicious opposition to the second wave of feminism... And after a page with no less fire of pathos, it will prove that it has always been so, from time immemorial, from the most cruel times of the Mosaic commandments. At an impressive volume of the book, for the most part it consists of a fiery swing of interpretation, triggered and swayed by short pulses of facts.

The third entry into the canon of conspiracy theories occurs precisely at those turns of noble pathos, when the horror of modern myth is trying to fit Wolfe into a single consistent history of mankind. This third feature is a completely illiterate (for all conspiracy theorists) juggling with religious dogma.

Starting with the words “the myth of beauty is a new gospel”, that is, from the first lines of a large chapter on the religious implications of the myth, Wolfe's reasoning does not stand up to scrutiny. But it’s not her fault. Knowledge of the canons, dogmas and subtleties of the books that make up Holy Scripture is very mediocre among very, very many publicists.

I am not saying now that traditional religions do not generate discrimination. They give birth. But they are arranged much more complicated than it is presented. But in this particular book, this story was simply not needed. Before the chapter on faith, Wolfe clearly and conclusively shows that the myth of beauty was formed recently, in the era of post-war capitalism, and grows out of the spirit of its time. It was not necessary rhetorically to root it in history. And all reasoning about faith serves only as a basis for an endless stream of optional rhymes that have little to do with the intricacies of Catholic theology. By the middle of the chapter, something becomes clear. When the actions of the advertisers of the industry rhyme with the techniques of the totalitarian religious sects of the nineteenth and twentieth century. Here I completely agree. But the rich, complex and controversial Christian theology is not equal to the rhetoric of sects speculating on the Gospel or any other text. Rather, historically recent sects, advertisers, and Naomi Wolf herself in this chapter use the same persuasion technique – a superficial reference to generally understood religious codes, interpreting them as conveniently.

The fourth sign of the canon: the constant interpretation of the thoughts of the abstract majority. Most women, most men, most medieval Christians. The women began to think this and that. The men began to think so. In those parts of the book wh ere this is supported by at least some sociology, some documents, at least private diaries, this can be taken into account. Although one should not forget that even in the crowd of Nazis who raised their hands in a salute to the Fuhrer in the forties in Germany, under each specific skull there was something of its own, its own inseparable knot of fears, delusions and small decisions. The most important tool in any heady conspiracy is the interpretation of the consciousness of large masses.

Do I need to explain why conspiracy theories have a detrimental effect on thinking abilities? Why is it harmful to train your brain to think in such categories?

I began my review by discussing how important it is to combat self-evidence in thinking. And, it would seem, conspiracy theories, like nothing else, challenges everything that is self-evident. “It seemed to you like this, but in reality, everything is exactly the opposite and even worse”. It is natural for a person to try to get to the bottom of the matter, feeling the need to destroy several idols and golden calves along the way. All Western European philosophy, science, psychological theater, but also victim blaming (blaming the victim) and the myth of negative consent (she says no, but implies “yes“). Yes, yes, at the heart of the last two phenomena is not only a malicious patriarchy (although he too), but also the natural desire of an inquiring mind to find an unobvious reason that others did not notice. That the rapist is to blame for the violence is self-evident. And so, the brain refuses to stop in its search for deep meanings. Both victimblaming and conspiracy theories are the flip side of the same properties of the mind that generate conscious reflection or philosophy. These are harmful side effects. Conspiracy books give a sense of revelation, especially when juggling with religious symbolism. It is no coincidence that it is in the second half of the twentieth century that the described myth of beauty and totalitarian sects, and the advertising industry in its modern form, flourish. You read such a text and it seems that the veil falls from the eyes. But among other things, a very dangerous pattern of thinking about the malicious class of exploiters-manipulators is fixed in the brain. Thinking becomes irreversibly ressentimental (ed. Ressentiment [fr. Ressentiment / rəsɑ̃timɑ̃ / “indignation, rancor, resentment”] – a feeling of hostility to what the subject considers the cause of his failures [“enemy”], powerless envy, “painful consciousness attempts to raise their status in life or in society”.] Feelings of weakness or inferiority, as well as envy towards the “enemy” lead to the formation of a value system that denies the value system of the “enemy”) and, worse, ceases to see complexity and multilevel nature of the surrounding world. A simplified picture of the world as a source of cheap dopamine.

Russia. Summer two thousand sixteenth. Five years ago. Before working in the adult industry, I happened to be a full-time designer in several industries: a ceramic tile factory and a wallpaper factory. Why, from all my professional experience, have I just remembered these two points? Because both of these factories printed their products for hundreds of kilometers, filling the counters of construction supermarkets with it throughout Russia. And at each of these productions, the designers, under the direction of the art direction (in both cases), gathered weekly for strategic meetings. Strategic meetings to squeeze as much money out of the end customer as possible. In the advisory headquarters, we had a map (like the real villains). And on this map, regions with different aesthetic preferences were marked. For example, in the Caucasus, they loved wallpaper with a lot of gold and baroque ornamental elements. What does such a mark on the map mean? It means that if seven out of ten buyers in the region buy gold wallpaper, then we will send nine designs there with gold and one without. That is, we will not form preferences, but we will try to play on them, involuntarily aggravating the existing state of affairs. Twist the contrast to the lim it. Let's take an objectively existing stereotype (wallpaper should look expensive and rich) and we will parasitize on it, at the same time involving those three unfortunate lovers of Scandinavian minimalism in this.

The principle of capitalism is Nietzschean: push the falling one. But it is supplemented by the second one: for those who do their job well (for example, a competitor who exploits the myth of beauty) – substitute the bandwagon. And the third: to the ascendant – give your hand. If a new trend is outlined (albeit just barely on the horizon), it should be used.

See how the adult products industry has quite learned to monetize and squeeze consumption out of feminism and emancipation. Was the beauty myth suppressing sexuality, requiring women to lose endless weight in order to succeed among men? Today's sex products industry requires women to have endless orgasms in a wide variety of solo games alone, in full acceptance of their appearance and financial situation, or sells toys for couples in an equal, mutually respectful relationship, when eco-friendly lovers masturbate each with their perfectly anatomically fitted device. looking into each other's eyes. Feminism sells well too.

I started by recommending that you read this book. According to the laws of the genre, I should also say the opposite. Yes, I really don't see much point in reading this work. Not because it is bad, not important, or not useful. This book has been on the list of international bestsellers for many years, so what was said in it has already been so dissolved in the environment that you may not learn anything new. I read a lot of feminist resources all the time. Partly on duty. The industry for adults, like any sphere of capitalist society, follows the spirit of the times and keeps its nose to the wind. Tries anyway. Here and there, large dinosaurs making or selling vibrators are stepping on the mines of New Ethics and new ideas about an acceptable sexualized utterance. The configuration of what is acceptable and what is decent is changing, and the cost of error is getting higher. This is a complex system, wh ere there is no single doctrine and a club of conspirators.

So, direct quotes from this book, or just ideas retold in your own words, have long become a common place in fem discourse. And personally, I constantly caught myself thinking that I had already read this or this fragment. So, if you are in the flow of time, you do not need to read this book. It is enough just to remove from time to time those toxins that I wrote about above. But for those who have lived on the island who do not have time to constantly follow the agenda, this book can become a powerful shock therapeutic course in order to understand what all these people are talking about in fempables. So yeah – the big dinosaurs of the adult industry who still make sex shop sites look like brothel sites – must read. Because otherwise I refuse to paint content for you.

All criticism of the book was directed exclusively towards form. I understand that this is more interesting to read. It is no coincidence that a good half of the entertainment Hollywood stories also exploit the ideas of conspiracy: a conspiracy of the government, the CIA, drug lords or aliens. The very facts, documents and correct calls for unification, self-organization and opposition to dangerous trends are a reason for thought and action.

Summer two thousand twenty one. Russia. I am the woman I love to tremble, the woman I want, it seems to me, all the time, a woman who completely deprives me of all working capacity because I am ready to just hug her until numbness and further, a woman with whom I am unchemically in love, because for a long time any chemistry should have already gone through, the woman is much more talented, wiser and more successful than me, me and she, somewhere in a protected corner of the nature near Moscow, naked, we swim in a shallow and therefore milky-warm reservoir. Here she comes out of the water after a short swim away from me. Comes out of the water to me, and I look at her. It takes my breath away, but all I can say is, how beautiful you are. And it hurts me to the pain of reducing my cheekbones that in modern language it sounds like a banal: “I want you”. That's not what I was trying to say! Damn it, how to put it in words?! How is it – to define beauty not apophatically, without listing what it is not? This woman is beautiful. Beautiful here and now, regardless of my erection or any of my aesthetic and visual arts expertise. How to say it? The myth of sex appeal is a more accurate title for the book. But having called it the “Myth of Beauty”, calling it so justifiably, because all public rhetoric calls it beauty, nevertheless, by this name shining from the shelf, Naomi Wolfe drives another nail into the coffin of beauty.

Although she herself gives beauty in her book another definition: “This light is very difficult to “catch” and successfully photograph, it cannot be evaluated on a ten-point scale or calculated in numbers in laboratory conditions. But most people know that a radiance can emanate from people's faces and bodies, which makes them beautiful. Some perceive this radiance as something inseparable from love and intimacy, as something that cannot be perceived separately and exclusively by the organs of vision, but only as a manifestation of the movement of the soul or the warm attitude of a loved one”.

We would like to thank the publishing house Alpina Non Fiction for the book.