“The beauty myth sets it up this way: A high rating as an art object is the most valuable tribute a woman… — Naomi Wolf Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the… — Naomi Wolf Copy Share Image
Victorian feminists made the mistake of making membership of the sisterhood conditional on signing up to a particular policy agenda. Marxist feminists… — 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
“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 Copy Share Image
When I was a baby feminist, leading feminist thinkers were insisting that if women ran the world, there would be no sadism… — 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
“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
“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 Copy Share Image
“Beauty" and sexuality are both commonly misunderstood as some transcendent inevitable fact; falsely interlocking the two makes it seem doubly true that… — Naomi Wolf Copy Share Image
“We do not have to spend money and go hungry and struggle and study to become sensual; we always were. We need… — Naomi Wolf Copy Share Image
“Why does the social order feel the need to defend itself by evading the fact of real women, our faces and voices… — 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
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 Copy Share Image
“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 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
“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
“Modern cosmetic surgeons have a direct financial interest in a social role for women that requires them to feel ugly. They do… — Naomi Wolf Copy Share Image
Women who love themselves are threatening; but men who love real women, more so. — Naomi Wolf Copy Share Image
“[The ideology of beauty] has grown strong to take over the work of social coercion that myths about motherhood, domesticity, chastity, and… — Naomi Wolf Copy Share Image
There was a bad patch in the '80s and early '90s when feminist thinking had become sort of a monopoly and had… — 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
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
Maybe the less pain we inflict on our bodies, the more beautiful our bodies will look to us — Naomi Wolf Copy Share Image
“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 Image
The Victorian woman became her ovaries, as today's woman has become her "beauty. — Naomi Wolf Copy Share Image
“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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
