Beauty is a conspiracy of pain forced upon women. Anorexia, induced by the pursuit of attractiveness, turns girls into something resembling skeletons. In the boardroom and in the bedroom, women are entrapped by a cult that is the equivalent of the iron maiden, a medieval torture instrument that impaled its captives on iron spikes.
These are only some of the assertions of The Beauty Myth (Morrow; $21.95), a provocative work by San Francisco-born Naomi Wolf, 28, that is being published in the U.S. this spring. Already, and as might be expected, reaction is divided. Fans of the work call it daring...