Beauty Myth Quotes

• No matter what a woman's appearance may be, it will be used to undermine what she is saying and taken to individualize - as her personal problem - observations she makes about the beauty myth in society.

  Naomi Wolf

  Taken, Independent Women, May

  Naomi Wolf (2013). “The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women”, p.274, Random House

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• Spokespeople sell women the Iron Maiden and name her "Health": if public discourse were really concerned with women's health, it would turn angrily upon this aspect of the beauty myth.

  Naomi Wolf

  Self Esteem, Names, Iron

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• The beauty myth is always actually prescribing behaviour and not appearance.

  Naomi Wolf

  Self Esteem, Equality, Behaviour

  Naomi Wolf (1990). “The Beauty Myth”, Vintage

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• The beauty myth moves for men as a mirage; its power lies in its ever-receding nature. When the gap is closed, the lover embraces only his own disillusion.

  Naomi Wolf

  Lying, Moving, Men

  Naomi Wolf (1990). “The Beauty Myth”, Vintage

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• Our society does reward beauty on the outside over health on the inside. Women must not be blamed for choosing short-term beauty "fixes" that harm our long-term health, since our life spans are inverted under the beauty myth, and there is no great social or economic incentive for women to live a long time.

  Naomi Wolf

  Makeup, Long, Doe

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• A cultural fixation on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty but an obsession about female obedience.

  Naomi Wolf

  Motivational, Beauty, Women

  Naomi Wolf (2013). “The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women”, p.187, Random House

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• Most urgently, women's identity must be premised upon our 'beauty' so that we will remain vulnerable to outside approval, carrying the vital sensitive organ of self-esteem exposed to the air.

  Naomi Wolf

  Self Esteem, Air, Identity

  Naomi Wolf (2009). “The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women”, p.14, Harper Collins

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• 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

  Men, Long, Naked

  Naomi Wolf (2013). “The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women”, p.139, Random House

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• 'Beauty' is a currency system like the gold standard. Like any economy, it is determined by politics, and in the modern age in the West is is the last, best belief system that keeps male dominance intact.

  Naomi Wolf

  Self Esteem, Age, Gold

  1990 The Beauty Myth, ch.1,'The Beauty Myth'.

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• The woman wins who calls herself beautiful, and challenges the world to change to fit her vision.

  Naomi Wolf

  Beautiful, Winning, Challenges

  "The Beauty Myth". Book by Naomi Wolf, 1990.

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• A culture fixation on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.

  Naomi Wolf

  Bad Ass, Mad, Political

  "The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women". Book by Naomi Wolf, 1990.

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• Is the beauty myth good to men? It hurts them by teaching them how to avoid loving women. It prevents men from actually seeing women. It does not, contrary to its own professed ideology, stimulate and gratify sexual longing. In suggesting a vision in place of a woman, it has a numbing effect, reducing all senses but the visual, and impairing even that.

  Naomi Wolf

  Hurt, Self Esteem, Teaching

  Naomi Wolf (1990). “The Beauty Myth”, Vintage

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• The Victorian woman became her ovaries, as today's woman has become her "beauty.

  Naomi Wolf

  Self Esteem, Ovaries, Her Beauty

  Naomi Wolf (1990). “The Beauty Myth”, Vintage

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• As soon as a woman's primary social value could no longer be defined as the attainment of virtuous domesticity, the beauty myth redefined it as the attainment of virtuous beauty. It did so to substitute both a new consumer imperative and a new justification for economic unfairness in the workplace where the old ones had lost their hold over newly liberated women.

  Naomi Wolf

  Self Esteem, Social Values, Workplace

  Naomi Wolf (2013). “The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women”, p.18, Random House

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• The idea that beauty is unimportant or a cultural construct is the real beauty myth. We have to understand beauty, or we will always be enslaved by it.

  Nancy Etcoff

  Real, Ideas, Myth

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• Beauty' is a currency system like the gold standard.

  Naomi Wolf

  Gold, Male Dominance, Currency

  Naomi Wolf (2009). “The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women”, p.12, Harper Collins

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• As women demanded access to power, the power structure used the beauty myth materially to undermine women's advancement.

  Naomi Wolf

  Self Esteem, Advancement, Structure

  Naomi Wolf (1990). “The Beauty Myth”, Vintage

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• Pain is real when you get other people to believe in it. If no one believes in it but you, your pain is madness or hysteria.

  Naomi Wolf

  Encouragement, Pain, Real

  Naomi Wolf (1990). “The Beauty Myth”, Vintage

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

  Naomi Wolf

  Self Esteem, Real, Men

  Naomi Wolf (1990). “The Beauty Myth”, Vintage

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• If we want liberation, we must rewrite the Sleeping Beauty myth. No one is coming and no one else is to blame.

  Elizabeth Lesser

  Freedom, Sleep, Want

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• The idea that beauty is unimportant is the real beauty myth.

  Nancy Etcoff

  Beauty, Real, Ideas

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