The Beauty Myth How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women Resource Type: Book Published: 1990 Writer and Journalist Naomi Wolf calls the current all pervasive need for women to attain an intangible physical beauty ideal the "beauty myth". It is calculated to disenpower women and is a complex pervasive backlash againts feminism. Women are seduced by the beauty myth because it holds promise of power. Women will remain tied to this myth until they realize that power may be revoked as easily as granted. The beauty myth was created to hold women's progress back not to liberate it.