5 February 1992
I am reading this book called The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf and it is so great I think I might go out and buy it tomorrow. It’s scary, but it’s that way because it’s so true, and it’s the best weapon against this myth that I’ve seen so far (or the awareness to be gained by reading it is the best wieldable weapon, anyway). I think it’s a good thing to have, to read again, and to lend to everyone I know. Already I want to lend it to Jasmine and Payson.
Anyway, in some ways it’s a little reassuring because I see that a lot of the neuroses she mentions are things I don’t take part in, but there are a lot that aren’t even clearly neuroses and some of them I do take part in without realizing that it’s going on. That’s what makes this book so amazing (the uncovering of these things). The scariest part, though, is I’m reading a part called "Hunger" (which totally reduces the argument for dieting to nothing, as well as proving that it’s dangerous, unhealthy, a fascist plot, and mind-altering in an extremely negative way) and she talks about how children today, brought up in the imagery of the Beauty Myth, are feeling overweight in elementary school, are starting to diet when they are 7-10 years old! And I suddenly remember that the last time I was home Carla kept saying to me "how do you stay so thin?" very mournfully, as if she were fat. I don’t think I could deal with it at the time. It didn’t sound like what should be coming out of an 8-year-old child’s mouth, who should be enjoying herself and not beginning to obsess before she even has a clue why?!?
A quote from the chapter called "Beyond the Beauty Myth" (page 291):
How to begin? Let’s be shameless. Be greedy. Pursue pleasure. Avoid pain. Wear and touch and eat and drink what we feel like. Tolerate other women’s choices. Seek out the sex we want and fight fiercely against the sex we do not want. Choose our own causes. And once we break through and change the rules so our sense of our own beauty cannot be shaken, sing that beauty and dress it up and flaunt it and revel in it: In a sensual politics, female is beautiful.