Fatal Beauty, the new faces of female alienation.

Padded bras for little girls, an obsession with thinness, the trivialization of cosmetic surgery, and the insistence on wearing skirts as a symbol of liberation: the "tyranny of the look" is now asserting its hold to impose the most stereotypical femininity. Analyzing women's magazines, advertising, blogs, television series, model testimonies, and sociological surveys, Mona Chollet shows in this book how the "fashion-beauty complex" industries work to maintain, in an insidious and seductive way, sexist logic at the heart of the cultural sphere.
Beneath the so-called cult of beauty thrives a hatred of oneself and one's body, fueled by the bombardment of unattainable standards. A process of self-devaluation that fuels constant anxiety about the physical while condemning women to not knowing how to exist other than through seduction, locking them into a state of permanent subordination. In this sense, the question of the body constitutes the key to advancing women's rights on all other levels, from the fight against violence to that of inequality at work.