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Famous Naomi Wolf Quotes

“In drawing attention to the physical characteristics of women leaders, they can be dismissed as either too pretty or too ugly. The net effect is to prevent women's identification with the issues. If the public women is stigmatized as too 'pretty,' she's a threat, a rival--or simply not serious; if derided as too 'ugly,' one risks tarring oneself with the same brush by identifying oneself with her agenda.”

IfsAttentionLeaderIssuesRiskEffectsSeriousThreatOneselfUglyDrawingCharacteristicsAgendasBrushesRivalsIdentificationIdentifyingWoman LeaderDrawing Attention
Author:Naomi Wolf
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“I did not imagine that pregnant women were 'naturally' any more sensitive or exalted than people in any other condition; only it seemed as if - perhaps because we are in such a twilight state, a melting down and reconstituting of the self - there was more opportunity to hear strains from what must be the other side, the moral music of the sphere.”

PeopleIfsSelfStatesOpportunitySidesMoralImagineConditionsDown AndSensitivePregnancySpheresTwilightImagine ThatPregnantStrainMeltingExaltedPregnant Women
Book:Misconceptions
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“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 Medicare and federal government solutions. But if you think through the analysis, strengthening state rights is a good corrective of the aggregation of an over-reaching federal power.”

IfsThinkingStatesGovernmentRightsSolutionsAnalysisReachingHeritageFederal GovernmentSan FranciscoHippieSympatheticMedicareStrengtheningCultural HeritageStates Rights
Author:Naomi Wolf
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“If people wake up, think critically, and get angry, we get connected to that courage that the founding generation meant us to have. History shows when millions just don't go along, resist at any level - and I'm talking about all the way up to bipartisan impeachment and arrest of the leaders of the coup - then it can't happen.”

PeopleIfsThinkingWayShowsHappensLevelsTalkingLeaderMillionsGenerationsWake UpAngryConnectedFoundingBipartisanCoupsImpeachment
Author:Naomi Wolf
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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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“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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“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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