ABSTRACT
“The stronger women became politically, the heavier the ideals of beauty would bear down on them, mostly in order to distract their energy and undermine their progress.” Naomi Wolf, feminist writer and former advisor to President Bill Clinton, published this poignant observation in her sociological critique The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women. Ironically, feminist scholar bell hooks, once named Wolf a symbolic beneficiary of America’s racially driven and size-sensitive beauty caste. hooks remarked, “Naomi Wolf is allowed to be both intellectual and sexy. Whenever a Black woman is attractive and sexy, she must be a whore”. While assigning African women to the lowest end of ugliness and White women to the highest end of beauty, White men altogether escaped serious unwarranted societal ridicule and constant critique, and instead experienced the privilege of upward mobility without those handicaps.
