The Gilded Society Vs. The Beauty Myth

After reading 6 headings (chapters) of Naomi Wolf’s “Beauty Myth”, I have come to understand the purpose behind writing Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale”. In the society of Gilead, a totalitarian regime is established in which the aim seems to prosecute women specifically. In the Beauty Myth or I could say the society we live in, men “use women’s “beauty” as a form of currency in circulation among men, ideas about “beauty” have evolved since the Industrial evolution side by side with ideas about money, so that the two are virtually parallels in our consumer economy” (20). The way women are looked upon in today’s society is an exaggeration in the way women are looked upon in the society of Gilead. In Gilead, Women are reduced to different roles some of which like the Handmaids-to a mere procreational function. This is like many cultures of our society such as the music industry and huge beauty corporations that make it look like the only way to make it in the world is through your appearance, which demotes women to no better than sex objects.

In the ‘Handmaids tale’ the women are forced to suffer the limitations placed upon them, which try to isolate the women by hindering communication between them. They are isolated in the same way “middle class women have been sequestered from the world, isolated from one another, and their heritage submerged with each generation, they are more dependent than men are on cultural models on offer bad they are more likely to be imprinted by them”(58). ‘The goal of all this is too highlights the way in which the mores of contemporary society suggest ultimately repressive views when taken to their logical extremes’. I think Atwood wrote “The Handmaid’s Tale”, in order to show how ridiculous and sexist society is towards women. In my opinion, Atwood is saying that under all the camouflaged reasons for why the beauty myth originated, women are being treated today in a totalitarian manner. The extremes that are presented in “The Handmaids Tale” are present today but are disguised in such a way that women do not notice. Wolf even goes on to say, “many [women] are ashamed to admit that such trivial concerns- to do with physical appearance, bodies, faces, hair clothes- matter so much” (9). Unfortunately in reality they do. Women in our society put themselves through pain in order to increase their beauty, very much like the “the high-heeled shoes…with their straps attached to the feet like delicate instruments of torture”(Atwood 38). In the “Handmaid’s Tale”, the women are being watched all the time. What does this constant surveillance do to women? Wolf say’s “an enforced lack of privacy strips dignity and breaks resistance”(99). The two investigations into the struggle of Women’s equality hint at the same obstacles that restrain women’s freedom and techniques used by external forces to subjugate women in all facets of their existence. 

Both authors are trying to illustrate the current situation of women through different diverse subjects and functions (no matter what the input is the output will be the same),  and in making the world aware of what they are not aware of, trying to make a difference. For me "to live in fear of one's body and one's life is not to live at all".