The ideology of beauty

Efrat Tseëlon

pp. 319-323

in: Stam, Leendert Mos, Warren Thorngate, Bernie Kaplan (eds), Recent trends in theoretical psychology, Berlin, Springer, 1993

Abstract

The paper takes the position that the rhetoric of beauty to which Western woman is constantly subject is not "nature" but "ideology". It identifies social psychological research as uncritically employing the assumption that beauty is an asset and ugliness is a stigma. Instead it arguesusing sociological and psychoanalytic concepts-that beauty is a manufactured masquerade that hides the stigma of ugliness.