Who knows what she could do? Who knows what it would feel like?”
“What if she doesn’t worry about her body and eats enough…” “she might rip her stockings and slam-dance on a forged ID.. and walk home bare foot, holding her shoes, alone at dawn…” “she might skateboard down Lombard street with its seven hairpin turns, or fall in love with her best friend and do something about it…” “or sit down when the pledge of allegiance says to stand, or hop a freight train, or take lovers without telling her last name, or run away to sea.
She might revel in all the freedoms that seem so trivial to those who could take them for granted; she might dream seriously the dreams that seem so obvious to those who grew up with them really available.
Who knows what she could do? Who knows what it would feel like?” - The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf.
She argues that beauty ideals and diet culture were created as a method to control women post second wave feminism. When the cult of domesticity could no longer keep women in the home, the patriarchy had to come up with another way of keeping women subdued and controlled. And what a better way of doing that then convincing women that in order to be valuable we needed to starve ourselves to make our bodies look a certain way. And people who don’t eat, do not have the energy to start revolutions. People who spend a large portion of their pay check on anti aging and beauty treatments to make sure they stay valuable, have less money and time for other things.
And I agree with her. It has kept us pre-occupied. And it is absolutely no coincidence that we are seeing a rise in skinnytok, trad wife ideals, and the spiritual girls talking about divine femininity as needing to be be led by a man. While this book was written in the 90s while she watched the backlash of second wave feminism fully realize it self. We are again in a backlash. They again are trying to figure out ways of keeping us small and distracted. So fuck that. I’m tired of seeing this trend and seeing us start to fall for it again. We owe the next generation strong role models. Women who take up space without apology. And we have to be those people.
