SOURCE: Gotschall, Mary G. “Poisoned Apple.” National Review (8 July 1991): 42–44.

In the following review, Gotschall offers an unfavorable assessment of The Beauty Myth.

In The Beauty Myth, a provocative new feminist tract which should take its place alongside such polemics as Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, Naomi Wolf argues that American women are enslaved by the cultural edict to be beautiful. They are victims of an impossible standard. The pressure, according to Miss Wolf, has become relentless during the past decade, as women have begun competing head-on with men in the professional sphere.

For Naomi Wolf, the beauty business isn't just a ploy by Madison Avenue to make a buck. What truly powers the ＄33-billion-a-year diet industry, the ＄20-billion cosmetics industry, the ＄300-million cosmetic-surgery industry, and the ＄7-billion pornography industry, she argues, is a far more insidious and destructive agenda. It is a political tool to keep women down...