Beauty discrimination has become necessary, not from the perception that women will not be good enough, but that they will be, as they have been, twice as good.

I am delighted to be joining 'Guardian U.S.''s team as a weekly columnist, and to have the chance to address American and global current events on its distinguished platform. 'Guardian U.S.' brings the 'Guardian''s hard-hitting investigative brand to a new focus on American news and opinion.

Women who are beautiful or who achieve beauty according to the imposed standards are rewarded; those who cannot or choose not to be beautiful are punished, economically and socially.

Looking back on 200 years of feminist agitation in this country, we've got to get it that the moral high ground doesn't get us anything. Pleading with powerful men never gets us what we need. Talking doesn't do it. Being right doesn't do it. Hardball politics does it ... and a political strategy.

Culture stereotypes women to fit the myth by flattening the feminine into beauty-without-intelligence or intelligence-without-beauty; women are allowed a mind or a body but not both.

Spokespeople sell women the Iron Maiden and name her "Health": if public discourse were really concerned with women's health, it would turn angrily upon this aspect of the beauty myth.

'The End of America' details the 10 steps that would-be dictators always take in seeking to close an open society; it argued that the Bush administration had been advancing each one.