Vanessa: Hi, Amy! I am really thrilled to be here supporting you and this podcast.

Todays’ book is called The Beauty Myth, written by Naomi Wolf in 1991, and I am super excited to discuss it with my reading partner, Vanessa Loder. And I thought: I have been sold something here. And my husband altered nothing, and spent no extra money, and absolutely no extra thought. I just altered almost every aspect of my body in order to measure up to society’s beauty standards for women - and I spent a lot of time and thought and money on each and every one of the products that enabled me to meet those standards. Next to me, my husband took a shower, dried off, put on his suit and flat shoes, and, okay, he did put lotion on his face and hands and put in one dab of one hair product in his hair. And of course a little jewelry for some added sparkle.

Then on my face I did a little concealer to make my skin look a more consistent color than it really is, eyeshadow and eyeliner to alter the appearance of my eyelids, mascara to make my eyelashes look longer and thicker and black (when they’re really just brown) eyebrow gel to darken my eyebrows, (but first I tweezed them to be a different shape than they really are.) Then some bronzer to make me look like I was blushing and some lip gloss to make my lips look shinier than they are naturally. Then I put on a bra to lift my boobs higher than they naturally are, Spanx to suck my torso to look smaller than it actually is, a dress, and high heels to make me look taller than I am. I took a shower, shaved my legs and underarms, dried off, moisturized with one lotion for my body and one lotion for my face, blow-dried my recently-color-treated hair to make it straight (it naturally dries in small curls), then used a curling wand to make it have big curls. I remember one time several years ago, my husband and I were getting ready to go out somewhere fancy.

Amy: Welcome to Breaking Down Patriarchy! I’m Amy McPhie Allebest.

The beauty myth book