had anorexia, when the actual percentage was 0.065. The Beauty Myth is no stranger to such manipulation, with Wolf having exaggerated statistics about anorexia - for example, stating around 7.5% of the total girls and women in the U.S. Though Wolf took it in her stride and corrected the above in her book, she has always had a problem with facts and statistics, often manipulating both to put across her point in a stronger manner. Sweet added, “I can’t find any evidence that any of the relationships you describe were consensual.” While Wolf was explaining how the last recorded execution for the above was misreported as 1835, host Matthew Sweet interjected saying, “Several dozen executions? I don’t think you’re right about this.” He then went on to disprove this key element in Outrages by both pointing out that ‘deaths recorded’ was the Victorian Court term for pardons, and that the term ‘sodomy’ used to record these crimes was then applicable for both same-sex relationships and child abuse. However, a problem regarding the book reemerged during a recent controversy that Wolf encountered while publicizing her new book, Outrages, a documentation of Victorian-era same-sex relationships and their persecution. Wolf writes, “The real issue has nothing to do with whether women wear makeup or don’t, gain weight or lose it, have surgery or shun it, dress up or down, make our clothing and faces and bodies into works of art or ignore adornment altogether. The real problem is our lack of choice.” It was a groundbreaking idea for its time. Women from all walks of life cannot seize power and happiness completely, because their insecurity at personal appearance - while bombarded by brands, fashion editorials, and pornography - is so profound that it mentally pulls them back.

In The Beauty Myth, Wolf argues that the standard of beauty and feminine traits assigned to women are devaluing. Although revolutionary in its prose and critical analysis, Wolf’s book fails at one vital juncture: accuracy. Many women have confessed that Wolf’s book was the antidote that woke them from the thrall of advertising, glamour and the intense need to conform to physical perfection. Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women has long been heralded as one of the greatest feminist books written.

The beautiful myth