'Dis-Ease' Disease

     We live in an era where women feel more discomfort with their bodies than ever before. They are willing to do anything in order to maintain a ‘better’ more ‘beautiful’ image. The category that women strive to be in is part of what Naomi Wolf refers to as “The Beauty Myth.” In her novel The Beauty Myth, Wolf talks about exactly that. She says that the whole essence of beauty portrayed by society in our world today is just a myth; it is a lie.
     Women of all ages are willing to undergo surgery, like actually let a doctor cut up their bodies and risk death just to get a facelift or a breast enhancement, you name it. They allow beauty physicians to rip off hairs that apparently make them look ugly and so shouldn’t be there. If it wasn’t supposed to be there why did God create women with body hair?
     Smoking, taking drugs, or throwing up on purpose are all things women do just to be what society perceives as beautiful. It is a fact that young women are subject to the uprising in smoking globally.

     “39 percent of all women who smoke say they smoke to maintain their weight; one quarter of those will die of disease caused by cigarette smoking–though, to be fair, the dead women’s corpses will weigh on average four pounds less than will the bodies of the living nonsmokers,” (229).

    Are you kidding me? It’s insane to think that those women are actually more willing to die and weigh less than live and weigh more. I got upset reading that passage for the first time. You know what, it still upsets me. I don’t think it will ever stop upsetting me.
     It’s sad that they don’t value themselves for who they are instead of what they look like. And it should not matter what they look like anyway. Who is to say I’m not beautiful? I would only consider myself ugly if I were to compare myself to someone else that I thought fit better into the ‘beautiful’ image.
     Naomi Wolf states that, “The myth is not only making women physically ill, but mentally ill,” (229). Directly following, she goes on to say, “Stress is one of the most serious medical risk factors.” This is because it lowers the immune system and contributes to high blood pressure, heart disease, and cancer. So no wonder women smoke; they are stressed! It still doesn’t justify the reasons behind it, but Wolf is clear to note that we shouldn’t blame those women for their actions because they are victims of the beauty myth just like the rest of us. “Women must not be blamed for choosing short-term beauty “fixes” that harm our long-term health, since our life spans are inverted under the beauty myth,” (230).