Le donne di tutto il mondo appaiono schiacciate da una nuova mitologia che non esalta più la casa, la purezza e la maternità, ma qualcosa di forse ancora più terribile e insidioso. E la bellezza ad acquisire valore sociale, diventando quindi ambizione costante e compito a cui ottemperare: dal lavoro alla sessualità, dalla cultura all'alimentazione, dal rapporto con gli uomini a quello con le altre donne. La questione decisiva che Wolf pone in questo grande classico del pensiero femminista è: « Le donne si sentono libere? ». Rispondere a questa domanda significa far emergere il complesso intreccio fra bellezza, potere e oppressione, fra corpi e imperativi economici e sociali. Un saggio attualissimo che ci aiuta a smascherare e a scardinare il mito della bellezza, che ancora oggi pervade la società contemporanea.

Il mito della bellezza

Réveil: un verre d'eau coupe-faim, la balance qui affiche les kilos en trop, le miroir et le décompte des rides, le masque hydratant, le gant de crin sous la douche, et les frigues rien-à-se-mettre. Midi: elle avale un oeuf dur, fonce au gymnase, court chez le coiffeur. Dîner en ville : salade en guise de hors-d'oeuvre, hors d'oeuvre en guise de plat et cigarette en guise de dessert. Coucher: re-verre d'eau, re-balance, re-crème...On la croyait enfin libre. On la retrouve dans la plus surprenante des prisons: son propre corps! Comment en est-elle arrivée là?A l'aide d'un bombardement d'images, explique Naomi Wolf, la femme s'est vue progressivement imposer un modèle physique asexué, désincarné et par définition inaccessible: le mythe moderne de la beauté.Flanqué de ses deux acolytes - le culte de la minceur et le culte de la jeunesse - le Mythe de la Beauté a réussi, en vingt ans, non seulement à remettre les femmes sous contrôle, mais aussi à faire des ravages considérables. Haine de soi, troubles sexuels, insomnies, dépressions nerveuses dues à des régimes d'amaigrissement, morts par anorexie ou liposuccion, sont quelques-uns des fléaux qui frappent aujourd'hui la population féminine. Avec la minutie d'une chercheur et abondance de témoignages parfois insoutenables, Naomi Wolf dénonce ce scandale qui fait les beaux jours de toute une industrie.Dans la tradition de "La femme mystifiée", de la "Femme eunuque" et de "la Politique du mâle", "Quand la beauté fait mal" est un cri de révolte. Saurons-nous l'entendre?

Quand la beauté fait mal

The bestselling author of The Beauty Myth, Vagina and The End of America chronicles the struggles and eventual triumph of John Addington Symonds, a Victorian-era poet, biographer, and critic who penned what became a foundational text on our modern understanding of human sexual orientation and LGBTQ+ legal rights.
In Outrages, Naomi Wolf chronicles the struggles and eventual triumph of John Addington Symonds, a Victorian-era poet, biographer, and critic who penned what became a foundational text on our modern understanding of human sexual orientation and LGBTQ+ legal rights, despite writing at a time when anything interpreted as homoerotic could be used as evidence in trials leading to harsh sentences under British law. Wolf's book is extremely relevant today for what it has to say about the vital importance of freedom of speech and the courageous roles of publishers and booksellers in an era of growing calls for censorship and ever-escalating state violations of privacy. At a time when the American Library Association, the Guardian, and other observers document national and global efforts from censoring LGBTQ+ voices in libraries to using anti-trans and homophobic sentiments cynically to win elections, the story of how such hateful efforts evolved from the past, to reach down to us now, is more important than ever. 
Drawing on the work of a range of scholars of censorship and of LGBTQ+ legal history, Wolf depicts how state censorship, and state prosecution of same-sex sexuality, played out-decades before the infamous trial of Oscar Wilde-shadowing the lives of people who risked in ever-changing, targeted ways scrutiny by the criminal justice system. She shows how legal persecutions of writers, and of men who loved men affected Symonds and his contemporaries, all the while, Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass was illicitly crossing the Atlantic and finding its way into the hands of readers who reveled in the American poet's celebration of freedom, democracy, and unfettered love. Inspired by Whitman, Symonds kept trying, stubbornly, to find a way to express his message-that love and sex between men were not 'morbid' and deviant, but natural and even ennobling. He wrote a strikingly honest secret memoir written in code to embed hidden messages-which he embargoed for a generation after his death - and wrote the essay A Problem in Modern Ethics that was secretly shared in his lifetime and is now rightfully understood as one of the first gay rights manifestos in the English language. Equal parts insightful historical critique and page-turning literary detective story, Wolf's Outrages is above all an uplifting testament to the triumph of romantic love.

Outrages

Naomi Wolf (née le 12 novembre 1962 à San Francisco) est une auteure et consultante politique américaine. Elle est la fille de Leonard Wolf (en), auteur de romans gothiques. Elle est considérée par plusieurs sources médiatiques comme une théoricienne du complot, du fait de ses déclarations publiques.

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