"Women breached the power structures meanwhile eating disorder rose exponentially and cosmetic surgery became the fastest-growing medical speciality."
The Iron Maiden
"urgent social expedient that would make womens bodies into the prisons that their homes no longer were"
"the iron maiden put the shape of a near skeleton and the texture of mens musculature where the shape and feel of a woman used to be"
"the orginal iron maiden was a medieval german instrument of torture, a body shaped casket, painted with the limbs and features of a lovely, smiling you woman. The unlucky victim was slowly enclosed inside her, the lid fell shut to immobilise the victim, who died either of starvation or, less cruelly, of the metal spikes embedded in her interior. The modern hallucination in which women are trapped or trap themselves is similarly rigid, cruel and euphemistically painted. Contemporary culture directs attention to imagery of the iron maiden, while censoring real womens faces and bodies."
Naomi Wolfs analogy of the Iron Maiden perfectly describes what I am trying to get at in my essay. The idea that women are held to a limiting, unrealistic beauty ideal is one that is not new to Wolf. She perfectly describes how women are trapped and trap themselves in a beauty ideal that is going to do nothing but hurt their physical and mental wellbeing.
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