SOURCE: Davenport-Hines, Richard. “Torments of the Flesh.” Times Literary Supplement (12–18 October 1990): 1097.

In the following review of The Beauty Myth, Davenport-Hines praises the eloquence and force of Wolf's writing, though finds shortcomings in what he perceives as her unconvincing statistical evidence and her failure to account for the personal responsibility of women.

Naomi Wolf grew up in California. Her mother Deborah kept a notepad in the kitchen where the rest of her family could surreptitiously peep at it. On the notepad Deborah recorded the agonies of her diet, and the guilt that engulfed her when she broke it with food binges. Deborah martyred herself at family meals, had tantrums of fury when she weighed herself, placarded the refrigerator with self-admonishing photographs of her shape. Judging from The Beauty Myth, her daughter was assaulted, even abused, with anxieties about food from her earliest years. By the age of thirteen Naomi...