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Famous Naomi Wolf Quotes

“In 70s America, protest used to be very effective, but in subsequent decades municipalities have sneakily created a web of "overpermiticisation" - requirements that were designed to stifle freedom of assembly and the right to petition government for redress of grievances, both of which are part of our first amendment.”

FirstsGovernmentAmericaUsedDecadesUsed To BeProtestAmendmentsRequirementsFirst AmendmentAssemblyGrievancePetitionsRedressMunicipalityFreedom Of Assembly
Author:Naomi Wolf
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“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.”

KnowsShouldMaySelfBodyGirlBoysSkillsUniqueSacredSexualityConcentrationCyclesPacePhasesEntrancesRigorSelf Contained
Author:Naomi Wolf
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“Dissident Natan Sharansky writes that there are two kinds of states - “fear societies” and “free societies.”… The two societies make up two kinds of consciousness. The consciousness derived of oppression is despairing, fatalistic, and fearful of inquiry. It is mistrustful of the self and forced to trust external authority. It is premised on a dearth of self-respect. It is cramped … In contrast, the consciousness of freedom … is one of expansiveness, trust of the self, and hope. It is a consciousness of limitless inquiry … It builds up in a citizen a wealth of self-respect.”

WritingKindTwoSelfStatesWealthConsciousnessCitizensAuthorityOppressionSelf RespectFearfulContrastInquiryLimitlessFree SocietyDissidentsExpansiveness
Author:Naomi Wolf
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“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.”

DoneBodyAgeTodayStruggleImagineDangerousPossibilityCapacityAccessObligationInevitableEvolveCombatMentalityImagine ThatTechnologicalSurgeonsNew Possibilities
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“A cultural fixation on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty but an obsession about female obedience.”

MotivationalWomenBeautyEatingFemaleIndependentObsessionObedienceDietsBody ImageEating DisorderDietingFemale BodyInternational Women's DayFixationFemale BeautyInternational Women DayBody WeightThinnessBeauty MythHealthy Body Image
Book:The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women
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“When [beauty pornography is] aimed at men, its effect is to keep them from finding peace in sexual love. The fleeting chimera of the airbrushed centerfold, always receding before him, keeps the man destabilized in pursuit, unable to focus on the beauty of the woman--known, marked, lined, familiar—-who hands him the paper every morning.”

MenHandsKnownMorningFocusEffectsPaperFindingsPursuitFamiliarEvery MorningFleetingPornographyFinding PeaceFashion IndustryChimera
Book:The Beauty Myth
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“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.”

IfsMenFeelsBelieveLooksBodyBeautifulFeltWalksWalkingStandardsFunctionIllMythLimbsDisabledUnwillingSurgeonsThighsVictorianDouble StandardFashion IndustryHypochondriacLooking Beautiful
Author:Naomi Wolf
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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.”

MenDoeHurtVisionSeeingTeachingEffectsSelf EsteemLongingMythContrarySensesIdeologyVisualsIt HurtsReducingSuggestingNumbingBeauty MythLoving A Woman
Book:The Beauty Myth
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“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.”

KnowsMenWellsHas BeensBeautifulChosenEsteemAcquireBuyingMutualTargetAlliesSoleImpressiveBeautiful WomenAcquisitionSabotageNo FriendsHer BeautyMutual TrustBuying Something
Author:Naomi Wolf
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“Cosmetic surgery is not "cosmetic," and human flesh is not "plastic." Even the names trivialize what it is. It's not like ironing wrinkles in fabric, or tuning up a car, or altering outmoded clothes, the current metaphors. Trivialization and infantilization pervade the surgeons' language when they speak to women: "a nip," a "tummy tuck."...Surgery changes one forever, the mind as well as the body. If we don't start to speak of it as serious, the millennium of the man-made woman will be upon us, and we will have had no choice.”

IfsMenMindHumansWellsMadeBodyChoicesNamesSpeakLanguageForeverCarSeriousClothesMetaphorCurrentsFleshPlasticFabricSurgerySurgeonsWrinklesCosmeticsMillenniumFashion IndustryTuningCosmetic Surgery
Author:Naomi Wolf
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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.”

ValuesLostSocialEconomicSelf EsteemMythEsteemDefinedPrimariesConsumersSubstitutesVirtuousJustificationWorkplaceImperativesAttainmentLiberatedUnfairnessDomesticitySocial ValuesLiberated WomanBeauty Myth
Book:The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women
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“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.”

IfsMenWantWould BeLastsSexFiguresDependsIndustryMen And WomenSellsConsumersAdsWant MeDiscontentDissatisfactionLove One AnotherRetailHow To LoveEstrangementCounterproductiveRetail Sales
Book:The Beauty Myth
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