Challenging Beauty as a Myth in the Novel 'Dumplin'' by Julie Murphy

Abstract

The tittle of this study is Breaking the Beauty Myth in Dumplin’ Novel by Julie Murphy. This study used Dumplin’ novel as the object of the study which focused on how the beauty myth was portrayed and how the characters resisted the beauty myth inside the novel using Naomi Wolf’s theory The Beauty Myth in Culture and Hunger chapters. The writer used qualitative descriptive method to collect, analysis, and interpret the data from dialogues and monologues. The results showed that beauty my attacked women especially their physical appearance that beautiful women should have thin body and if they were not, they should go on strict diet. However, the characters did not accept the beauty myth which said beautiful was thin. They rejected the concept of beauty myth by eating foods that they liked and accepting who they were regardless that their body type belonged to the beauty standard or did not.

Keywords: feminism, beauty standard, beauty myth, women empowerment