In “A Woman’s Beauty: Put-Down or Power Source?” Sontag displays her historical interest as well as her interest in current attitudes toward gender roles. In arguing agains the dangerous and limiting ideals to which women have subjected themselves (and been subjected by men), Sontag brings to bear a brisk analysis of Greek and Christian perspectives, implicating both in their consequences for contemporary women’s obsessive and compulsive efforts to make themselves beautiful. Unlike many contemporary essays, Sontag’s essays lack a strong autobiographical impulse. One might expect such a personal strain in an essay on women’s beauty—it certainly would not be out of place—but Sontag assiduously avoids the personal note. But Sontag is less concerned either with her own experiences of beauty or with past perspectives on beauty in and of themselves. She is far more interested in how the past can help us understand the present, and how past perspectives affect modern women’s fascination with and desire for personal beauty.