Tolentino begins with a discussion of how society's current ideal woman has turned leisure activities into a form of work. Currently, this ideal is "always optimizing" (63), trying to improve herself through technology, money, and time. Her body is shaped by exercise and highly controlled. Tolentino looks at historical images of the ideal woman, writing that this ideal has always been "engineered to look natural" (64) and just barely allows for individuality. Today, she writes, there is the illusion of independent thought in the current ideal. However, Tolentino notes, when women rebel against something (for example, the overuse of Photoshop on female images), the aesthetic changes, but the ideal still exists. This works hand-in-hand with popular feminism.

Tolentino further situates women's self-improvement, "a ridiculous and often amoral project" (65), within capitalism. The ideal always being out of reach encourages this optimization. As an example, Tolentino writes about the salad chain Sweetgreen that provides efficient nutrition quickly. Tolentino describes her own relationship to vegetables and exercise, which she writes only became a large part of her life after she returned from the Peace Corps at age 21. On her return, she noted that being around the women in American yoga studios brought up mixed emotions for her.