In her book The Beauty Myth Naomi Wolf states, “The beauty myth tells a story: The quality called ‘beauty’ objectively and universally exists. Women must want to embody it and men must want to possess women who embody it. This embodiment is an imperative for women and not for men, which situation is necessary and natural because it is biological, sexual, and evolutionary: Strong men battle for beautiful women, and beautiful women are more reproductively successful. Women’s beauty must correlate to their fertility, and since this system is based on sexual selection, it is inevitable and changeless.
None of this is true, ‘Beauty’ is a currency system like the gold standard. Like any economy, it is determined by politics, and in the modern age in the West it is the last, best belief system that keeps male dominance intact. In assigning value to women in a vertical hierarchy according to a culturally imposed physical standard, it is an expression of power relations in which women must naturally compete for resources that men have appropriated for themselves” (Wolf 12).
Think about the Binewski family and the ways in which the power dynamics between the men and women existed. What constituted beauty or genetic superiority? Who had the power in the family and what gave them that authority?
Prompt: In what ways does Geek Love reinforce and/or dismantle the beauty myth as defined by Wolf in this excerpt?
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