The beauty myth? is your self esteem tied up with how you look?

Question

I read the Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf some years ago and really agreed with her critique.

What do other people think who have read this book? Did it affect your life / self image? Is your self esteem tied up with how you feel about your physical appearance?

I'm not asking if you think you're beautiful, but if you think that it is possible to have self esteem without having to think that you are beautiful. I guess no one so far has actually read the book.

Answer 1

looks are not everything i should know im ugly but dont seem to have trouble pulling attractive women

Answer 2

I have not read the book.

However, there is a prominent person who disproves correlating beauty with self-esteem. This person is Hilary R. Clinton. The pictures and footage of Ms. Clinton in her early years shows an awkward homely, but confident woman. Once Ms. Clinton started working on getting her husband into office, she also started a beauty make-over ... however, as history showed, her husband still defamed her marriage (with real ugly chicks), and Ms. Clinton's self-esteem went to the crapper (despite she was at her all time high in beauty). So sad. Starting off a happy ugly duckling and then when she blossomed into a swan she was crushed.

Also look at Jennifer Lopez & Hally Berry who have publicly stated they suffered from depression when cheated on. They maintained beauty.

Answer 3

Yes. My self esteem is high and it affects how people look at me. People think that I am really beautiful, but I think it is my happy personality that makes me beautiful. If I always had a sad or angry look on my face all the time and had a really negative attitude, then people will perceive me as ugly or unattractive.

Answer 4

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. We all feel good some days others ugh!. So if you feel you are beautiful you are. You only get problems with self esteem when someone else knocks yours.

Answer 5

I am very short, and lacked self confidence until a bought a copy of Naomi Wolf's book and used it to stand on. Now I feel much taller and am currently dating a girl two chapters smaller than me.

Answer 6

never read the book..but i think your esteem affects the way you think you look..if you have a low esteem your going to think your ugly and nothing you do will make you pretty..and a high esteem youll have the confidence and think you look good

Answer 7

of course, but i think it works in this direction: my self esteem is high, i love myself, i think i look great and beautiful.

i think the feelings and perceptions of how one looks are driven by how one already feels about oneself.

not the other way around where looks are some objective reality that affects one's feelings about oneself.

Answer 8

some large solutions already, so i will take this in a particularly different route. supply it yet another couple of generations. The media rigidity is ramping up on youthful men. They discovered a thanks to debris women as a lot as get us to purchase unneeded crap, so now they're operating that similar head vacation on men. the adaptation on the on the spot might want to be that women were raised by using women who were subjected to a similar pressures, so we began learning to devalue ourselves earlier shall we understand advertising. You men a minimum of had a probability to hit puberty earlier it began. each and every August, my mom might want to take us out decrease back-to-college procuring, when we were given homestead, she'd deliver us off to attempt *each and every thing* on for our father even as she cooked dinner. He turned right into a sturdy sufficient trooper about it, yet did not fairly care. My mom's self-properly worth changed into stuck up interior the money she kept by ability of her skill at procuring and he or she needed us to illustrate it off to the bread-winner. So there i'm, 4 years old, interior the gown she's determined i will positioned on to my first day at pre-college, with her multiplicity of anxieties round me, waiting for Dad to inform me i look especially in it. this isn't about men being seen. it truly is about women training different women those messed-up values.

Answer 9

No, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, it is your intelligence that counts.