Beauty is constantly changing, it is not universal. Society uses images of female beauty as a political weapon against women. There is a connection between female liberation, and female beauty. When women got the right to their own bodies with legalized abortion, they also started to feel like they needed to look a certain way. This led to a rise of eating disorders in women. Women feel like they need to look a certain way for men, and according to the article this is what keeps male dominance intact. The qualities that make a woman beautiful change during different time periods, and it is based on what men find desirable. This is most likely because men have an image of being big and strong, and women have an image of being frail and weak. Denying oneself food is seen as bad for men but good for women. It is up to the third wave feminist to fight to get rid of the beauty myth. It is the only way that women could ever become truly equal to men. Freidan compares women now to older women that used to wear girdles. The girls now wear invisible girdles. It is their self image and they cant take it off at night. Wearing two piece bikini’s are not freedom for women, its just another way that men can objectify them. Women are now taught to fear men because men are sexual predators. Women have no energy to escape men because they are anorexic. Women will never be as powerful to men because of the mindset that the beauty myth gives them.

              "The Beauty Myth" focuses on how the standards of physical beauty has grown stronger in order for women as they gained power in other societal arenas. According to Wolf, the beauty myth is not about women, it is about men’s institutions and power. Beauty is about behavior, not appearance; the qualities labelled “beautiful” in women in any given time period are no more than symbols of female behavior considered desirable at that time. Virginia Wolf’s idea of the Iron Maiden is quite simple. The iron maiden is an unattainable standard of beauty that is used to chastise women physically and psychologically for their failure to achieve and conform to it. This beauty myth is centered around men’s power and institutions, even with the feminist progressive movement, women are stuck within this vicious cycle due to the Beauty Myth. Wolf stated and I quote because this statement reigns true and needs to be a way of life; women should posses "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 politically". According to Wolf women were under attack by the "beauty myth" in five areas: work, religion, sex, violence, and hunger. The number accomplishments women achieve in gaining equality for power, men will have the upper hand because of the link between female appearance and self respect that they have created and enforced.

               Body beauty has been linked to the concept of femininity. Author Bordo of The Male Body suggests that men have become the new sexualized objects of the gaze as women have been. She along with a few others  believe that the sexualization of men in the media and their participation in appearance enhancing practices weaken traditional gender dichotomies. (Barber, 176) Ones interest and participation in beauty culture is interlocked through the systems of race, class, gender sexuality and age. According to Luciano the switch from work overalls to flannel suits began post war (1945-1960). It became a necessity for corporate men to interact with their customers which emphasize the importance of one's appearance. Marketers associate professional success with products that had previously been seen as symbols of vanity, narcissism and femininity. (177) For women beauty work is more than just beauty, its about expressing a particular social status by grooming the body to suit said status as well as expressing social location. Salons are for women, and barbershops are for men! The hair salon is not a place were men would gather to emulate masculinity  When a man chooses the salon and participates in femininity beauty work that becomes noticeably, outside of the norm.





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Barber, Kristen "The Well- Coiffed Man" 2012. Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology, 8th edition, edited by Margaret L. Andersen and Patricia Hill Collins. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.