Top quotes by Naomi Wolf

In the U.S., the '50s and '60s marked the documentary's golden age, especially at CBS, where pioneering television journalist Edward R. Murrow, immortalised in George Clooney's 'Good Night, and Good Luck,' produced such landmark investigations as the CBS Reports programme 'Hunger in America.' Votes: 48

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. Votes: 45

For all the power of video and film, I am not giving up my pen. I am just much more likely to try to link essays to webcasts or videos. The best way for these two media to move forward, to inform and make change, is in tandem; together they are more than the sum of their parts. Votes: 34

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. Votes: 30

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. Votes: 28

What, after all, is the narrative of 'the American Dream?' It was a discourse formulated between the 1880s and the 1920s in the United States during the great waves of migration and expansion and reforms of the Progressive Era. Votes: 23

From 1970 onwards, our culture told both sexes that individual expression was paramount. And for women, that was defined as the right to choose an interesting a career, a high-status mate, the desirable handbag or vacation, the perfect family size, and a definitionally fruitless quest for 'perfection.' Votes: 22

The First Amendment applies to rogues and scoundrels. You don't lose your First Amendment rights because of a sleazy personality, or even for having committed a crime. Felons in jail are protected by the First Amendment. Votes: 20

Victorian feminists made the mistake of making membership of the sisterhood conditional on signing up to a particular policy agenda. Marxist feminists made a similar mistake of saying, 'You can't be a real feminist unless you join with miners, the unions, the vegans.' Votes: 19

Kim Kardashian's marriage to Kris Humphries famously lasted 72 days, and was reported in the tabloids as being all about the big bucks paid by magazines for the bridal photos: it is a spectacle of a bride-to-be as entrepreneur, not as romantic heroine; the groom, in this scenario, is nothing but a prop. Votes: 18

Obstacles, of course, are developmentally necessary: they teach kids strategy, patience, critical thinking, resilience and resourcefulness. Votes: 17

We are all Julian Assange. Serious reporters discuss classified information every day - go to any Washington or New York dinner party where real journalists are present, and you will hear discussion of leaked or classified information. That is journalists' job in a free society. Votes: 16

French existentialism is an unhelpful philosophy in which to couch modern feminism: born from the ravages of the Second World War, it is a cynical, individualistic school of thought that posits the self and personal choice as the measure of life's entire meaning. Votes: 16

The First Amendment was designed to allow for disruption of business as usual. It is not a quiet and subdued amendment or right. Votes: 14

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. Votes: 14

It is fairly well-known what has been behind that climate change denial in America: vast sums pumped into an ignorance industry by the oil and gas lobbies. Votes: 14

Peaceful, lawful protest - if it is effective - is innately disruptive of 'business as usual.' That is why it is effective. Votes: 13

The symbolic value of having an African-American president has certainly eased some racial tensions in America, but they're not gone. Votes: 13

Of course a woman who decides to work full time as a mother in the home can be happy and deserves full respect from us. Motherhood is one of the most challenging and creative jobs anyone can do. The goal is to remake the world so that our choices are not so stark. Votes: 12

It is standard practice for corrupt leaders who are seeking a certain political outcome to hype or manipulate a terror threat or a threat of violent domestic subversion. While sometimes the threat is manufactured, frequently the hyped threat is based on a real danger. Votes: 12

Madonna is that forbidden thing, the Nietzschean creative woman. Her preoccupation with a high level of work doesn't allow her to follow the usual script that powerful women are expected to follow - 'don't hate me for my success, don't hate me for my power.' Votes: 10

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. Votes: 10

I'm a big believer in debate and difference of opinion. Votes: 9

Every Yom Kippur, Jewish tradition requires a strict spiritual inventory. You aren't supposed to just sit around feeling guilty, but to take action in the real world to set things right. Votes: 9

As a free-speech advocate, I believe that adults should have access to any material they want. As a parent, and a community member, I think people should be able to protect their homes from imagery - much of it violent - that is, I feel, a form of child abuse when adult society inflicts it upon children. Votes: 5

Let's dare to release our immature fantasies of a magically faultless U.S. system and a magically protected election process. We have been lucky as a nation, but sometimes continued luck depends on action. Votes: 5

A utopian future for the Internet could be secured if the heavy-duty influencers - and the grassroots influencers tweeting along - can create a new global organization peopled with defenders of Internet freedom. Votes: 4

In a fascist shift, reporters start to face more and more harassment, and they have to be more and more courageous simply in order to do their jobs. Votes: 4

We often feel a twinge of guilt over our own fascination with presidential candidates' wives - as if we are secretly reading the 'Star' for our campaign information instead of the policy journals. Votes: 3

Citizens who live or work near protest sites or marches have every right to be free of violence from protesters, and they should never be subjected to destruction of property. Votes: 2

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. Votes: 0

Western women have been controlled by ideals and stereotypes as much as by material constraints. Votes: 0

How is it even sustainable in 21st-century America that women earn, on average, 77 cents for every dollar earned by men? Votes: 0

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." Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

The beauty myth is always actually prescribing behaviour and not appearance. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

As women demanded access to power, the power structure used the beauty myth materially to undermine women's advancement. Votes: 0

Cosmetic surgery processes the bodies of woman-made women, who make up the vast majority of its patient pool, into man-made women. Votes: 0

Cosmetic surgery and the ideology of self-improvement may have made women's hope for legal recourse to justice obsolete. Votes: 0

For I conclude that the enemy is not lipstick, but guilt itself; that we deserve lipstick, if we want it, AND free speech; we deserve to be sexual AND serious--or whatever we please; we are entitled to wear cowboy boots to our own revolution. Votes: 0

Beauty' is a currency system like the gold standard. Votes: 0

Democracy is disruptive. Around the world, peaceful protesters are being demonised for this, but there is no right in a democratic civil society to be free of disruption. Protesters ideally should read Gandhi and King and dedicate themselves to disciplined, long-term, non-violent disruption of business as usual - especially disruption of traffic. Votes: 0

Democracy is disruptive... there is no right in a democratic civil society to be free of disruption. Votes: 0

Documentary film without nuanced journalistic sourcing risks being sensational, tendentious or broad-brushed. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

A cultural fixation on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty but an obsession about female obedience. Votes: 0

The press doesn't stop publishing, by the way, in a fascist escalation; it simply watches what it says. That too can be an incremental process, and the pace at which the free press polices itself depends on how journalists are targeted. Votes: 0

Since Madonna is positioned as always 'cooler than thou,' we all are primed for schadenfreude if something in her fabulous life goes amiss. Votes: 0

Health makes good propaganda. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Women who love themselves are threatening; but men who love real women, more so. Votes: 0

We are in the midst of a violent backlash againist feminism that uses images of female beauty as political weapons against women's advancement. Votes: 0

The more legal and material hindrances women have broken through, the more strictly and heavily and cruelly images of female beauty have come to weigh upon them. Votes: 0

The human beings at the helm of the new nation [USA], whatever their limitations [slave owners, anti-democracy], were truly revolutionary. The theory of liberty born in that era, the seed of the idea, was perfect.More important, the idea itself carried within it the moral power to correct the contradictions in its execution that were obvious from the very birth of the new nation. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. So even if we agree that sexual imagery is in fact a language, it is clearly one that is already heavily edited to protect men's sexual--and hence social--confidence while undermining that of women. Votes: 0

A Mother who radiates self-love and self-acceptance actually VACCINATES her daughter against low self-esteem. Votes: 0

What, after all, is the narrative of the American Dream? It was a discourse formulated between the 1880s and the 1920s in the United States during the great waves of migration and expansion and reforms of the Progressive Era. Votes: 0

The Victorian woman became her ovaries, as today's woman has become her "beauty. Votes: 0

Looking back on 200 years of feminist agitation in this country, we've got to get it that the moral high ground doesn't get us anything. Pleading with powerful men never gets us what we need. Talking doesn't do it. Being right doesn't do it. Hardball politics does it ... and a political strategy. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

It has been said that each generation must win its own struggle to be free. -Robert F. Kennedy Votes: 0

Beauty provokes harassment, the law says, but it looks through men's eyes when deciding what provokes it. Votes: 0

What are other women really thinking, feeling, experiencing, when they slip away from the gaze and culture of men? Votes: 0

What editors are obliged to appear to say that men want from women is actually what their advertisers want from women. Votes: 0

Healthy" and "diseased," as Susan Sontag points out...are often subjective judgments that society makes for its own purposes. Women have long been defined as sick as a means of subjecting them to social control. Votes: 0

Today a woman must ignore her reflection in the eyes of her lover, since he might admire her, and seek it in the gaze of the God of Beauty, in whose perception she is never complete. Votes: 0

The surgeons' market is imaginary, since there is nothing wrong with women's faces or bodies that social change won't cure; so the surgeons depend for their income on warping female self-perception and multiplying female self-hatred. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women's history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

To ask women to become unnaturally thin is to ask them to relinquish their sexuality. Votes: 0

Aging in women is 'unbeautiful' since women grow more powerful with time, and since the links between generations of women must always be broken. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Women have face-lifts in a society in which women without them appear to vanish from sight. Votes: 0

Many of the signals that either stoke or diminish female desire have to do with the female brain's question: Is it safe here? Votes: 0

The economics of industrialized countries would collapse if women didn't do the work they do for free: According to economist Marilyn Waring, throughout the West it generates between 25 and 40 percent of the gross national product. Votes: 0

The mass depiction of the modern woman as a "beauty" is a contradiction: Where modern women are growing, moving, and expressing their individuality, as the myth has it, "beauty" is by definition inert, timeless, and generic. That this hallucination is necessary and deliberate is evident in the way "beauty" so directly contradicts women's real situation. Votes: 0

When I was a baby feminist, leading feminist thinkers were insisting that if women ran the world, there would be no sadism or war. Votes: 0

After we were hit on September 11, 2001, we were in a state of national shock. Less than six weeks later, on October 26 2001, the U.S.A. Patriot Act was passed by a Congress that had little chance to debate it; many said that they scarcely had time to read it. Votes: 0

...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. Votes: 0

'The End of America' details the 10 steps that would-be dictators always take in seeking to close an open society; it argued that the Bush administration had been advancing each one. Votes: 0

It is never smart, even in a strong democracy, to declare some debate off limits. In a weakening democracy it is catastrophic. Votes: 0

Italy in the 1920s, Germany in the '30s, East Germany in the '50s, Czechoslovakia in the '60s, the Latin American dictatorships in the '70s, China in the '80s and '90s - all dictatorships and would-be dictators target newspapers and journalists. Votes: 0

If you look at weak democracies, the oligarchies that have taken undue control of them always seek to tamper with the vote. It is important for oligarchs to have elections to give their guy a veneer of legitimacy - and important for the vote always to turn out 'their way.' Votes: 0

The Tea Party emerged from a laudably grassroots base: libertarians, fervent Constitutionalists, and ordinary people alarmed at the suppression of liberties, whether by George W. Bush or Barack Obama. Votes: 0

There was a bad patch in the '80s and early '90s when feminist thinking had become sort of a monopoly and had developed a series of litmus tests. Votes: 0

For Gore 2000, I was a formal campaign adviser: contrary to RNC mythology, my brief was not 'wardrobe,' but rather policy on women's issues, and messaging. I was also married to a Clinton speechwriter, and observed the message decision-making process from the perspective of a spouse. Votes: 0

It is important to distinguish between the power of the Internet to make the great change it can, and the limits and vulnerabilities of that change without real-time political mobilization deployed globally to protect those who venture out, especially in closed societies, into the heady new vistas it offers. Votes: 0

I am delighted to be joining 'Guardian U.S.'s team as a weekly columnist, and to have the chance to address American and global current events on its distinguished platform. 'Guardian U.S.' brings the 'Guardian's hard-hitting investigative brand to a new focus on American news and opinion. Votes: 0

My job is to notice echoes and notice resonances. Scientists are not supposed to do the same thing that cultural critics do. Votes: 0

I don't think most men do hate women at all - I think most men are trying their best and facing a culturation into masculine behaviour that forces them to deny their own humanity and to exaggerate distance from the world of women. Votes: 0

In a fascist system, it's not the lies that count but the muddying. When citizens can't tell real news from fake, they give up their demands for accountability bit by bit. Votes: 0

Since Reagan there has been this tradition, which has become a cliche, of promising morning in America, this fake optimism, we're the best, the city on the hill. In fact the great American task is self-scrutiny. Votes: 0

A culture fixated 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. Votes: 0

a white person who claims to have no impediment of vision in this country is not, I think, telling the whole truth. And when it comes to race relations, not telling the whole truth about the fog one inhabits slows down the work of groping forward. Votes: 0

At least a third of a woman's life is marked with aging; about a third of her body is made of fat. Both symbols are being transformed into operable condition Votes: 0

'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. Votes: 0

Become goddesses of disobedience. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Culture stereotypes women to fit the myth by flattening the feminine into beauty-without-intelligence or intelligence-without-beauty; women are allowed a mind or a body but not both. Votes: 0

Dissident Natan Sharansky writes that there are two kinds of states -- "fear societies" and "free societies," 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. Votes: 0

Excellence, to me, is the state of grace that can descend only when one tunes out all the world's clamor, listens to an inward voice one recognizes as wiser than one's own, and transcribes without fear. Votes: 0

For all the power of video and film, I am not giving up my pen... together they are more than the sum of their parts. Votes: 0

I am delighted to be joining 'Guardian U.S.''s team as a weekly columnist, and to have the chance to address American and global current events on its distinguished platform. 'Guardian U.S.' brings the 'Guardian''s hard-hitting investigative brand to a new focus on American news and opinion. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

It's human nature to abuse power, no matter who you are. Votes: 0

Maybe the less pain we inflict on our bodies, the more beautiful our bodies will look to us Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth, and that is not speaking. Votes: 0

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 or your own unfeminine inadequacy. Women have learned to submit to pain by hearing authority figures - doctors, priests, psychiatrists - tell us that what we feel is not pain. Votes: 0

Poststructuralism. . . . is a form of literary criticism that uses elaborate wordplay to prove its central premise, that all language is internally contradictory and has no fixed meaning. Votes: 0

Protesters should make their own media and not rely on mainstream media to cover them. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

She wins who calls herself beautiful and challenges the world to change to truly see her. Votes: 0

The Western sexual revolution sucks. It has not worked well enough for women. Votes: 0

There is this giant void in the culture about women in that age group as heroines, as romantic beings, as sexual beings and as creative beings, and there's not that void for men. Women don't stop being all those things as their lives continue into those decades. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Vogue began to focus on the body as much as on the clothes, in part because there was little they could dictate with the anarchic styles...In a stunning move, an entire replacement culture was developed by naming a 'problem' where it had scarcely existed before, centering it on the women's natural state, and elevating it to the existential female dilemma...The number of diet-related articles rose 70 percent from 1968 to 1972...The lucrative 'transfer of guilt' was resurrected just in time. Votes: 0

We as women are trained to see ourselves as cheap imitations of fashion photographs, rather than seeing fashion photographs as cheap imitations of women Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

What editors are obliged to appear to say that Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

When women breached the power structure in the 1980s?two economies finally merged. Beauty was no longer just a symbolic form of currency: it literally became money. Votes: 0

Women who are beautiful or who achieve beauty according to the imposed standards are rewarded; those who cannot or choose not to be beautiful are punished, economically and socially. Votes: 0

When women are pessimistic about their political strength and feel hopeless about changing the conditions of their lives, it is almost as if they do not believe that democracy means the country belongs to them. But it's true. Votes: 0

Women are mere "beauties" in men's culture so that culture can be kept male. When women in culture show character, they are not desirable, as opposed to the desirable, artless ingenue. Votes: 0