Literature Review of The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf and Images of Woman: Advertising in Women’s Magazines by Trevor Millum.

 

The literature review intends to summarise a variety of text relating to my chosen subject; body image in current culture. The intention is to gather information from several readings that may contribute to a dissertation in the final year. Deciding to focus mainly on the representation of women in media and in advertisement I attempt to understand the reasoning behind the obsession with the ideal self in a consumer driven world. Insecure women are exposed to the idea that it is important to look and be a certain way, forcing them to follow unrealistic notions and images of beauty that are mistakenly considered achievable. The relationship between genders in advertisement through inferior and superior roles prolong the ideology that men are the dominant sex in spite of such significant events such as the Women’s Liberation Movement that altered the perception of weakness attached to being a woman in society.

 

The Beauty Myth- Naomi Wolf

 

The book The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf explores the idea that the beauty myth is feeding a nation of insecure women at work, in the media, in the religious sphere, in sex and in sexual relations; she also discusses the relationship against women through both male and female perspectives. As power is consistently gained, the standards of beauty similarly rise with a new way of controlling women. The inferiority and power struggle experienced for decades in a world dominated by the male sex has revolutionised, yet the idea of beauty continues to weaken modern women and demolish any sense of achievement while they instead strive for perfection “American women told researchers that they would rather lose ten to fifteen pounds than achieve any other goal” Wolf, N. (1990 Pg.10).

 

Naomi’s research is relevant as she investigates into a variety of cultural issues including the sexualisation of women, the ideologies and influences the male population has, theories of perfection and the multibillion pound cosmetic surgery industry allowing women to butcher their bodies in pursuit of happiness having failed to find contentment in their own skin. I am intrigued to investigate these concepts further in the dissertation and possibly focus on considering how ideas of beauty post modernism differ from ideas of beauty in historic culture while exploring the catalyst provoking the alternating perceptions of the perfect self.

Naomi suggests that the catalyst is the consumer culture “Consumer culture is best supported by markets made up of sexual clones, men who want objects and women who want to be objects and the object desired is ever- changing, disposable and dictated by the market” Wolf, N (1990 Pg.144) suggesting that society heavily influences the market by falling for advertisement techniques that use powerful imagery for example; of beautiful women edited flawlessly in Photoshop convincing them that purchasing a product will allow them to achieve the beauty projected in the image. A man viewing such imagery prompts unrealistic expectation assuming such highly constructed images of beauty exist and are the norm.

 

Images of Woman Advertising in Women’s Magazines- Trevor Millum

 

In the dissertation I am also likely to concentrate on how women are projected as sexual objects of fascination and spectacle in the media and in film “Seeing a face anticipating orgasm, even if it is staged is a powerful sell; in the absence of other sexual images, many women came to believe that they must have that face, that body, to achieve that ecstasy” Wolf, N (1990 Pg. 135). This relates to the second book: Images of Woman Advertising in Women’s Magazines by Trevor Millum that methodically explores advertisement techniques and investigates the meaning behind every fragment that contributes to a final advertising image. The book also explores the use of sex as a selling technique “Advertisements using nude or semi-nude models were initially confined to the more fashion orientated glossy magazines but had spread across the majority of the woman’s magazine field by 1968” Millum, T. (1975 Pg.65).The most relevant chapter of the book in relation to my area of study researches into the significance of physical appearance and concepts of femininity exploring the work of several theorists to explain how the actor or actress can communicate to an audience through the advertisement despite the fact the event is actually staged. The book would be helpful in my dissertation in attempt to uncover the reasoning behind campaigns and the techniques used to provoke women to strive for beauty seen in the media and through adverts, it also explores the representation of female and male roles which is interesting since the book was written in 1975 therefore it provides insight into how the roles may have altered since the book was written.

 

The book suggests that often the advertisement companies create false expectations and realities “the everyday woman and the model in the advertisement are not as carefree and untroubled as they might appear” Millum, T. (1975 Pg.79) for both political and economic reasons. Millum claims the economic reason for false advertisement is with the aim to turn women into reliable consumers of feminine and domestic goods and political claims that it is another way of men dominating major sectors in society. He highlights the inequality of men and women, suggesting being male is in some sense normal and to be female is not “The reason why the discussion of the femininity is so difficult, and the reason why it should be a topic at all, is that the standards by which mankind in general and societies and individuals in particular have estimated the values of male and female are not neutral” Millum, T. (1975 Pg.71).

 

In conclusion both books support my approach that issues surrounding body image stem significantly from the pressures and ideas of perfection that the media generate. The issues they cover are important to consider and could both be used to back certain ideologies of sexualisation and representation of women as object. Other reading that may also contribute to the dissertation include; Changing Women, Unchanged Men?: Sociological Perspectives on Gender in a Post-industrial Society by Sara Delamont, Laura Mulvey Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema and The Male Gaze Theory.

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