In the text by Naomi Wolf, she talks about the problems that women face now that they have gained their rights. It seems as though women have lost the rights to their own body. In The Beauty Myth Wolf writes about how after women obtained rights and jobs the next problem was image. Now that women have all that power the last thing left to be controlled by is their image. Through statistics Wolf tells us that as women got more and more power the number of eating disorders and cosmetic surgery shot up. It appears that men used the last thing they could to stay in control of the women.
In The Handmaids Tale we see that women’s rights seem to have been removed even though they appear to have the power (as they produce the next generation). By doing this the society has also removed the women’s need to be beautiful. Wolf writes about the fact that in many religions goddesses “only function [is] the service of the divine ‘womb.’” This is seen in The Handmaids Tale because the handmaids are needed and are “special” because of the service they provide but they are really only needed for their reproductive ability.
The power that is exercised by men (in Wolf’s essay) to control the thoughts of women through the advertisements (ex: “diet and skin care industries because the new cultural censors of women’s intellectual space.”) is also seen in The Handmaids Tale. During the novel we see that the education of the handmaids is not important any longer and that the next generation of handmaids will not know how to read or write. This affects the power that they could potentially have.
I think that in The Handmaids Tale the struggle between Beauty and power has been shown very well. Throughout the novel Offred mentions that she used to wear makeup and now she no longer does anything to try and beautify herself. While she is taking a bath she tries not to look at herself so that she won’t see what defines her so completely. From this we see that in an attempt at liberation of women, beauty has been discarded, however women’s freedom has been even more restricted.
I agree with what you said about how in Handmaids Tale the struggle between beauty and power is shown through Offred and how she doesn't try to make herself look beautiful anymore and how while she takes a bath, she doesn't look at herself so that she won't see what defines her completely. But I also think that in Handmaids Tale, beauty is and power is also shown through the suppression of beauty because the women all have to wear huge gowns/cloaks so that no one can see their bodies and they even wear those hats to cover their heads. Beauty is hidden through the use of clothing in the novel as well. Not only are women not worried about looking beautiful anymore, they aren't allowed to show beauty.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you Sitara, I think that the uniforms that the Handmaids, Econowives, Marthas, and others wear are to subjugate them even further. By making each woman in a different possition wear a different color I think creates classes between the women themselves. I think that beauty is hidden with the clothes and women are also separated though thier clothes. However I think that the lack of beauty is very impartant to this novel. In the text we read we found that beauty is the last thing that controls women and in Gilead that too has been taken away from them.
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