In this thesis I explore the beauty myth in past and, predominantly, contemporary SF. I begin the thesis by defining the beauty myth, drawing on Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth and Judith Butler’s Bodies That Matter. Wolf convincingly argues that the beauty myth pervades all areas of women’s lives, extending to their reproductive organs. This thesis will then emphasize the entrenched nature of the beauty myth throughout human history, beginning with the young and pure Virgin Mary protagonist, through to more modern heroines such as Octavia Butler’s Lilith. I use various theoretical lenses to understand how and why the beauty myth survives in some SF literature, and in what ways other SF works to deconstruct this gender paradigm. Besides Naomi Wolf’s analysis and Judith Butler’s performativity theory, these lenses include exoticism, the Other/subaltern native, Judith Butler’s performativity theory, Toril Moi’s Kristeva-inspired liminality theory, Foucault’s analysis of power, Rosi Braidotti’s posthumanism, Julia Kristeva’s theory of signification and her theory of the abject, Suvin’s cognitive estrangement, and an examination of gaming and anime culture. Several SF works serve as my primary texts, but I examine the beauty myth in Hannu Rajanemi’s Quantum Thief trilogy, Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2312 and Galileo’s Dream, Ursula Le Guin’s Left Hand of Darkness, and Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis in most detail. The contrast between the treatment of the beauty myth by the first pair of authors and the second is startling, with the former dressing the beauty myth in futuristic garb while Le Guin and Butler re-imagine not only new worlds but also new ways of being. Unexpectedly, these new ways of being are made possible, in Butler’s trilogy at least, by the womb—the protagonist gives birth to an unforeseen and unfathomable new species, thereby rewriting the beauty myth’s hold over the protagonist and the next generation.