Naomi Wolf Quotes - Page 2

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• The idea that women are innately gentle is a fantasy, and a historically recent one. Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction, is depicted as wreathed in male human skulls; the cruel entertainments of the Romans drew audiences as female as they were male; Boudicca led her British troops bloodily into battle.

  Naomi Wolf

  Ideas, Skulls, Battle

  29 Copy quote

• To ask women to become unnaturally thin is to ask them to relinquish their sexuality.

  Naomi Wolf

  Body Image, Sexuality, Relinquishing

  27 Copy quote

• Sexiness is no longer defined just as whether we are desirable, but also what we desire. The more liberated women become - economically, politically, and personally - the more erotic we are. Freedom is a lot sexier than dependency.

  Naomi Wolf

  Erotic, Desire, Sexiness

  8 Copy quote

• Since Madonna is positioned as always "cooler than thou", we all are primed for schadenfreude if something in her fabulous life goes amiss.

  Naomi Wolf

  Fabulous Life, Fabulous, Schadenfreude

  "Madonna acts just like a serious male artist would - and people hate her for it" by Naomi Wolf, www.theguardian.com. February 6, 2012.

  21 Copy quote

• 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

  26 Copy quote

• 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.

  30 Copy quote

• Maybe the less pain we inflict on our bodies, the more beautiful our bodies will look to us

  Naomi Wolf

  Beautiful, Pain, Looks

  15 Copy quote

• 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

  15 Copy quote

• Women have face-lifts in a society in which women without them appear to vanish from sight.

  Naomi Wolf

  Self Esteem, Sight, Faces

  13 Copy quote

• Peaceful, lawful protest - if it is effective - IS innately disruptive of “business as usual.” That is WHY it is effective.

  Naomi Wolf

  Peaceful, Usual, Protest

  "The First Amendment and the Obligation to Peacefully Disrupt in a Free Society" by Naomi Wolf, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 20, 2011.

  11 Copy quote

• Beauty discrimination has become necessary, not from the perception that women will not be good enough, but that they will be, as they have been, twice as good.

  Naomi Wolf

  Self Esteem, Perception, Discrimination

  Naomi Wolf (2009). “The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women”, p.22, Harper Collins

  14 Copy quote

• What becomes of a man who acquires a beautiful woman, with her 'beauty' his sole target? He sabotages himself. He has gained no friend, no ally, no mutual trust: She knows quite well why she has been chosen. He has succeeded in buying something: the esteem of other men who find such an acquisition impressive.

  Naomi Wolf

  Beautiful, Men, No Friends

  "The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women". Book by Naomi Wolf, October 24, 1991.

  39 Copy quote

• The last thing the consumer index wants men and women to do is to figure out how to love one another: The $1.5 trillion retail-sales industry depends on sexual estrangement between men and women, and is fueled by sexual dissatisfaction. Ads do not sell sex--that would be counterproductive, if it meant that heterosexual women and men turned to one another and were gratified. What they sell is sexual discontent.

  Naomi Wolf

  Sex, Men, Would Be

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

  31 Copy quote

• Don't sit around waiting for the two corrupted established parties to restore the Constitution or the Republic. The founding generation was birthed by the rabble of all walks of life that got fed up and did risky things because they were captivated by the breath of liberty. There is a looming oligarchy and it is up to the people to organize a grassroots movement and push back.

  Naomi Wolf

  Party, Two, People

  "Naomi Wolf Thinks the Tea Parties Help Fight Fascism -- Is She Onto Something or in Fantasy Land?". Interview with Justine Sharrock, www.alternet.org. March 29, 2010.

  8 Copy quote

• We should be telling girls what they already know but rarely see affirmed: that the lives they lead inside their own self-contained bodies; the skills they attain through their own concentration and rigor, and the unique phase in their lives during which they may explore boys and eroticism at their own pace - these are magical. And they constitute the entrance point to a life cycle of a sexuality that should be held sacred.

  Naomi Wolf

  Girl, Unique, Boys

  26 Copy quote

• 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

  21 Copy quote

• 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

  24 Copy quote

• Modern cosmetic surgeons have a direct financial interest in a social role for women that requires them to feel ugly. They do not simply advertise for a share of a market that already exists: Their advertisements create new markets. It is a boom industry because it is influentially placed to create its own demand through the pairing of text with ads in women's magazines. The industry takes out ads and gets coverage; women get cut open. They pay their money and they takes their chances. As surgeons grow richer, they are able to command larger and brighter ad spaces.

  Naomi Wolf

  Cutting, Space, Roles

  15 Copy quote

• I argue that we deserve the choice to do whatever we want with our faces and bodies without being punished by an ideology that is using attitudes, economic pressure, and even legal judgments regarding women's appearance to undermine us psychologically and politically.

  Naomi Wolf

  Attitude, Choices, Body

  13 Copy quote

• Today, women have access to the technological capacity to do anything to our bodies in the struggle for "beauty", but we have yet to evolve a mentality beyond the old rules, to let them imagine that this combat among women is not inevitable. Surgeons can now do anything. We have not yet reached the age in which we can defend ourselves with an unwillingness to have "anything" done. This is a dangerous time. New possibilities for women quickly become new obligations.

  Naomi Wolf

  Struggle, Age, Done

  16 Copy quote

• ...When we quietly go about our business as our rights are plundered, when we yield to passivity and switch on the wii and hand over our power, we are not acting like true Americans. Indeed, at those moments we are giving up our citizenship.

  Naomi Wolf

  Giving Up, Yield, Rights

  Naomi Wolf (2008). “Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries”, p.6, Simon and Schuster

  14 Copy quote

• The surgeons are playing on the myth's double standard for the function of the body. A man's thigh is for walking, but a woman's is for walking and looking "beautiful." If women can walk but believe our limbs look wrong, we feel that our bodies cannot do what they are meant to do; we feel as genuinely deformed and disabled as the unwilling Victorian hypochondriac felt ill.

  Naomi Wolf

  Beautiful, Believe, Men

  17 Copy quote

• The real fight isn't left or right but between forces of democracy across the spectrum and the forces of tyranny.

  Naomi Wolf

  Real, Fighting, Democracy

  "NEWS & POLITICS Naomi Wolf Thinks the Tea Parties Help Fight Fascism -- Is She Onto Something or in Fantasy Land?". Interview with Justine Sharrock, www.alternet.org. March 29, 2010.

  8 Copy quote

• The maturing of a woman who has continued to grow is a beautiful thing to behold. Or, if your ad revenue or your seven-figure salary or your privileged sexual status depend on it, it is an operable condition.

  Naomi Wolf

  Beautiful, Salary, Mature

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

  13 Copy quote

• The stronger that women grow, the more prestige, fame, and money is accorded to the display professions: They are held higher and higher above the heads of rising women, for them to emulate.

  Naomi Wolf

  Self Esteem, Stronger, Rising

  Naomi Wolf (2009). “The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women”, p.27, Harper Collins

  14 Copy quote

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