Beauty' is a currency system like the gold standard. Like any economy, it is determined by politics, and in the modern age in the West is is the last, best belief system that keeps male dominance intact.

Women have face-lifts in a society in which women without them appear to vanish from sight.

Western women have been controlled by ideals and stereotypes as much as by material constraints.

No matter what a woman's appearance may be, it will be used to undermine what she is saying and taken to individualize - as her personal problem - observations she makes about the beauty myth in society.