Feminism Quotes by Naomi Wolf

“Sexuality follows fashion, which follows politics.”

— Naomi Wolf

Women who love themselves are threatening; but men who love real women, more so.

— Naomi Wolf

“If women cannot eat the same food as men, we cannot experience equal status in the community.”

— Naomi Wolf

Western women have been controlled by ideals and stereotypes as much as by material constraints.

— Naomi Wolf

We are in the midst of a violent backlash againist feminism that uses images of female beauty as political weapons against women's…

— Naomi Wolf

When I was a baby feminist, leading feminist thinkers were insisting that if women ran the world, there would be no sadism…

— Naomi Wolf

“Some women have become far too proscriptive of other women's pleasures and private arrangements, and the definition of feminism has become ideologically…

— Naomi Wolf

What editors are obliged to appear to say that men want from women is actually what their advertisers want from women.

— Naomi Wolf

I've never understood this puritanical idea that feminism has to be a cult. You know, we all have to think alike or…

— Naomi Wolf

There was a bad patch in the '80s and early '90s when feminist thinking had become sort of a monopoly and had…

— Naomi Wolf

How is it even sustainable in 21st-century America that women earn, on average, 77 cents for every dollar earned by men?

— Naomi Wolf

Beauty discrimination has become necessary, not from the perception that women will not be good enough, but that they will be, as…

— Naomi Wolf

A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the…

— Naomi Wolf

When women are pessimistic about their political strength and feel hopeless about changing the conditions of their lives, it is almost as…

— Naomi Wolf

I argue that we deserve the choice to do whatever we want with our faces and bodies without being punished by an…

— Naomi Wolf

Victorian feminists made the mistake of making membership of the sisterhood conditional on signing up to a particular policy agenda. Marxist feminists…

— Naomi Wolf

“Beauty" and sexuality are both commonly misunderstood as some transcendent inevitable fact; falsely interlocking the two makes it seem doubly true that…

— Naomi Wolf

French existentialism is an unhelpful philosophy in which to couch modern feminism: born from the ravages of the Second World War, it…

— Naomi Wolf

“[The ideology of beauty] has grown strong to take over the work of social coercion that myths about motherhood, domesticity, chastity, and…

— Naomi Wolf

In drawing attention to the physical characteristics of women leaders, they can be dismissed as either too pretty or too ugly. The…

— Naomi Wolf

“Modern cosmetic surgeons have a direct financial interest in a social role for women that requires them to feel ugly. They do…

— Naomi Wolf

“Young women today feel vulnerable to judgment; if a harsh sentence is passed (or even suspected or projected), it is not her…

— Naomi Wolf

“A man is unlikely to be brought within earshot of women as they judge men's appearance, height, muscle tone, sexual technique, penis…

— Naomi Wolf

“Men are visually aroused by women's bodies and less sensitive to their arousal by women's personalities because they are trained early into…

— Naomi Wolf

“At least a third of a woman's life is marked with aging; about a third of her body is made of fat.…

— Naomi Wolf

“In a sexual double standard as to who receives consumer protection, it seems that if what you do is done to women…

— Naomi Wolf

“Where woman do not fit the Iron Maiden [societal expectations/assumptions about women's bodies], we are now being called monstrous, and the Iron…

— Naomi Wolf

“Self-denial can lock women into a smug and critical condescension to other, less devout women. According to Appel, cult members develop..."an attitude…

— Naomi Wolf

“Women understand that there are two distinct economies: There is physical attraction, and then there is the “ideal.” When a woman looks…

— Naomi Wolf

“Why does the social order feel the need to defend itself by evading the fact of real women, our faces and voices…

— Naomi Wolf

“Until recently the locus of sexual fantasy was peopled with images actually glimpsed or were sensations actually felt, or private imaginings taken…

— Naomi Wolf

“A consequence of female self-love is that the woman grows convinced of social worth. Her love for her body will be unqualified,…

— Naomi Wolf

“Never," enjoins a women's magazine, "mention the size of his [penis] in public...and never, ever let him know that anyone else knows…

— Naomi Wolf

“We do not have to spend money and go hungry and struggle and study to become sensual; we always were. We need…

— Naomi Wolf

“Their [girls] sexual energy, their evaluation of adolescent boys and other girls goes thwarted, deflected back upon the girls, unspoken, and their…

— Naomi Wolf

“The beauty myth sets it up this way: A high rating as an art object is the most valuable tribute a woman…

— Naomi Wolf

To live in a culture in which women are routinely naked where men aren't is to learn inequality in little ways all…

— Naomi Wolf

Women are mere "beauties" in men's culture so that culture can be kept male. When women in culture show character, they are…

— Naomi Wolf

The stronger that women grow, the more prestige, fame, and money is accorded to the display professions: They are held higher and…

— Naomi Wolf

“Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women's history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.”

— Naomi Wolf