The surgeons are playing on the myth's double standard for the function of the body. A man's thigh is for walking, but a woman's is for walking and looking "beautiful." If women can walk but believe our limbs look wrong, we feel that our bodies cannot do what they are meant to do; we feel as genuinely deformed and disabled as the unwilling Victorian hypochondriac felt ill.
About This Quote
About Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth
Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth.
Themes
- Beauty — Appreciating aesthetics, grace, and the sublime