Advertising’s beauty ideals were marketed to drain women’s energy just as they neared power.

Evidence

There were just thirty of us there in the room; that’s how early it was in her fame. We sat cross-legged on cheap broadloom carpet listening as Wolf told us that powerful forces had developed unattainable beauty ideals at the precise moment when young women like us were finally on the cusp of breaking through glass ceilings that had held our mothers back. That was why so many of us starved ourselves, gagged ourselves, wasted valuable brain cells hating our bodies or dreaming of plastic surgery instead of doing the work we were there to do. It was exhausting us, distracting us, robbing us of our rightful power and place in the world. — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 1129

Categorization

• CANDY: The compressed version of The Beauty Myth’s thesis — beauty standards as a counterpunch to women’s ascendance — is a neat one-liner for conversation.