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… — Naomi Wolf Copy Share Image
As women demanded access to power, the power structure used the beauty myth materially to undermine women's advancement. — Naomi Wolf Copy Share Image
The more legal and material hindrances women have broken through, the more strictly and heavily and cruelly images of female beauty have… — Naomi Wolf Copy Share Image
Looking back on 200 years of feminist agitation in this country, we've got to get it that the moral high ground doesn't… — Naomi Wolf Copy Share Image
“When novelist Margaret Atwood asked women what they feared most from men, they said: 'We're afraid they'll kill us.' When men were… — Naomi Wolf Copy Share Image
“For any one woman to outgrow the myth, she needs the support of many women. The toughest but most necessary change will… — Naomi Wolf Copy Share Image
To me, my version of feminism, it's co-extensive with human rights and democracy. It's just part of the same fight for everyone… — Naomi Wolf Copy Share Image
“By the 1980s beauty had come to play in women’s status-seeking the same role as money plays in that of men: a… — Naomi Wolf Copy Share Image
“The economics of industrialized countries would collapse if women didn't do the work they do for free: According to economist Marilyn Waring,… — Naomi Wolf Copy Share Image
“Why should her lover, just because he is male, be in a position to judge her against other women? Why must she… — Naomi Wolf Copy Share Image
“For the first time in history, children are growing up whose earliest sexual imprinting derives not from a living human being, or… — Naomi Wolf Copy Share Image
“Men who read it [beauty pornography] don't do so because they want women who look like that. The attraction of what they… — Naomi Wolf Copy Share Image
“An economy that depends on slavery needs to promote images of slaves that “justify” the institution of slavery. The contemporary economy depends… — Naomi Wolf Copy Share Image
“Sadly, the signals that allow men and women to find the partners who most please them are scrambled by the sexual insecurity… — Naomi Wolf Copy Share Image
“Whatever is deeply, essentially female--the life in a woman's expression, the feel of her flesh, the shape of her breasts, the transformations… — Naomi Wolf Copy Share Image
“She may resent Playboy because she resents feeling ugly in sex--or, if "beautiful," her body defined and diminished by pornography. It inhibits… — Naomi Wolf Copy Share Image
“Our society does reward beauty on the outside over health on the inside. Women must not be blamed for choosing short-term beauty… — Naomi Wolf Copy Share Image
“Women could probably be trained quite easily to see men first as sexual things. If girls never experienced sexual violence; if a… — Naomi Wolf Copy Share Image
“Sexual satisfaction eases the stranglehold of materialism, since status symbols no longer look sexual, but irrelevant. Product lust weakens where emotional and… — Naomi Wolf Copy Share Image
“Housework’s modern status,” writes Ann Oakley, “is nonwork.” A recent study shows that if housework done by married women were paid, family… — Naomi Wolf Copy Share Image
“You could see the signs of female aging as diseased, especially if you had a vested interest in making women too see them your… — Naomi Wolf Copy Share
Demographically, I'm a hippie from San Francisco and I'm not culturally inclined to be sympathetic to states' rights. My cultural heritage is FDR and… — Naomi Wolf Copy Share
There's been a systematic propagandizing of American citizens for 30 years to make us forget what America is supposed to be and what our… — Naomi Wolf Copy Share
Maybe the less pain we inflict on our bodies, the more beautiful our bodies will look to us — Naomi Wolf Copy Share
“The rise of the beauty myth was just one of several emerging social fictions that masqueraded as natural components of the feminine sphere, the… — Naomi Wolf Copy Share
The Victorian woman became her ovaries, as today's woman has become her "beauty. — Naomi Wolf Copy Share
“The anthropologist Margaret Mead concluded in 1948, after observing seven different ethnic groups in the Pacific Islands, that different cultures made different forms of… — Naomi Wolf Copy Share
What becomes of a man who acquires a beautiful woman, with her "beauty" his sole target? He sabotages himself. He has gained no friend,… — Naomi Wolf Copy Share
“Beauty” is a currency system like the gold standard. Like any economy, it is determined by politics, and in the modern age in the… — Naomi Wolf Copy Share
“Rape and sexual assault ... should be understood not just as a form of forced sex, they should also be understood as as a… — Naomi Wolf Copy Share
“The qualities that a given period calls beautiful in women are merely symbols of the female behavior that that period considers desirable: The beauty… — Naomi Wolf Copy Share
To live in a culture in which women are routinely naked where men aren't is to learn inequality in little ways all day long. — Naomi Wolf Copy Share
a white person who claims to have no impediment of vision in this country is not, I think, telling the whole truth. And when… — Naomi Wolf Copy Share
“The beauty myth sets it up this way: A high rating as an art object is the most valuable tribute a woman can exact… — Naomi Wolf Copy Share
“Societies tell themselves necessary fictions in the same way that individuals and families do. Henrik Ibsen called them “vital lies,” and psychologist Daniel Goleman… — Naomi Wolf Copy Share