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a6e6a92 As women demanded access to power, the power structure used the beauty myth materially to undermine women's advancement. beauty scoiety images marketing media self-esteem Naomi Wolf
f1632f7 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-- women will only feel healthy if we are two thirds of the women we could be. How can an "ideal" be about women if it is defined as how much of a female sexual characteristic show on her body, and how much of a female life show on her face?" equality feminism beauty body-image cosmetic-surgery diet-industry fashion-industry mass-culture objectification plastic-surgery cosmetics images marketing society culture double-standards magazines sexuality self-esteem aging Naomi Wolf
7e28895 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. Naomi Wolf
7e4d9cc Rape and sexual assault ... should be understood not just as a form of forced sex, they should also be understood as as a form of injury to the brain and body, and even as a variant of castration. rape Naomi Wolf
2f45c1b Beauty" and sexuality are both commonly misunderstood as some transcendent inevitable fact; falsely interlocking the two makes it seem doubly true that a woman must be "beautiful" to be sexual. That of course is not true at all. The definitions of both "beautiful" and "sexual" constantly change to serve the social order, and the connection between the two is a recent invention." equality feminism beauty body-image sexual-violence cosmetic-surgery diet-industry fashion-industry mass-culture objectification plastic-surgery cosmetics images marketing pornography society culture double-standards magazines sexuality eating-disorders self-esteem aging Naomi Wolf
0020224 Young women today feel vulnerable to judgment; if a harsh sentence is passed (or even suspected or projected), it is not her reputation that suffers so much as the stability of her moral universe. They did not have long to explore the sexual revolution and make it their own. Before the old chains had grown cold, while young women were still rubbing the circulation back into their ankles and taking tentative steps forward, the beauty industr.. equality feminism beauty body-image cosmetic-surgery diet-industry fashion-industry mass-culture objectification plastic-surgery cosmetics images marketing pornography society culture double-standards magazines sexuality eating-disorders self-esteem aging Naomi Wolf
3a0ffc6 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. body-image society self-image self-esteem Naomi Wolf
8587131 Every woman is wired differently. Some women's nerves branch more in the vagina; other women's nerves branch more in the clitoris. Some branch a great deal in the perineum, or at the mouth of the cervix. That accounts for some of the differences in female sexual response. vagina Naomi Wolf
f959554 Many of the signals that either stoke or diminish female desire have to do with the female brain's question: Is it safe here? women-s-sexuality Naomi Wolf
1795576 Where woman do not fit the Iron Maiden [societal expectations/assumptions about women's bodies], we are now being called monstrous, and the Iron Maiden is exactly that which no woman fits, or fits forever. A woman is being asked to feel like a monster now though she is whole and fully physically functional. 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.. equality feminism beauty body-image sexual-violence cosmetic-surgery diet-industry fashion-industry mass-culture objectification plastic-surgery cosmetics images marketing pornography society culture double-standards magazines sexuality eating-disorders self-esteem aging Naomi Wolf
8ebf9a0 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. A beautiful heroine is a contradiction in terms, since heroism is about individuality, interesting and ever changing, while "beauty" is generic, boring, and inert. While culture works out moral dilemmas, "beauty" is amoral: If a woman is born resembling an art object, it is a.. beauty images self-esteem Naomi Wolf
a1473a6 The real issue has nothing to do with whether women wear makeup or don't, gain weight or lose it, have surgery or shun it, dress up or down, make our clothing and faces and bodies into works of art or ignore adornment altogether. The real problem is our lack of choice. Naomi Wolf
4c516a4 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
c03ea89 The beauty myth of the present is more insidious than any mystique of femininity yet: A century ago, Nora slammed the door of the doll's house; a generation ago, women turned their backs on the consumer heaven of the isolated multiapplianced home; but where women are trapped today, there is no door to slam. The contemporary ravages of the beauty backlash are destroying women physically and depleting us psychologically. If we are to free our.. beauty images marketing society magazines eating-disorders self-esteem Naomi Wolf
f67b906 Sexual satisfaction eases the stranglehold of materialism, since status symbols no longer look sexual, but irrelevant. Product lust weakens where emotional and sexual lust intensifies. The price we pay for artificially buoying up this market is our heart's desire. The beauty myth keeps a gap of fantasy between men and women. That gap is made with mirrors; no law of nature supports it. It keeps us spending vast sums of money and looking dist.. equality feminism beauty body-image sexual-violence cosmetic-surgery diet-industry fashion-industry mass-culture objectification plastic-surgery cosmetics images marketing pornography society culture double-standards magazines sexuality eating-disorders self-esteem aging Naomi Wolf
ef917c5 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. beauty body-image marketing society self-esteem Naomi Wolf
4b775ba Since middle-class Western women can best be weakened psychologically now that we are stronger materially, the beauty myth, as it has resurfaced in the last generation, has had to draw on more technological sophistication and reactionary fervor than ever before. The modern arsenal of the myth is a dissemination of millions of images of the current ideal; although this barrage is generally seen as a collective sexual fantasy, there is in fac.. feminist body-image society Naomi Wolf
040693e 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, .. freedom fear liberty Naomi Wolf
1bc531c In a sexual double standard as to who receives consumer protection, it seems that if what you do is done to women in the name of beauty, you may do what you like. It is illegal to claim that something grows hair, or makes you taller, or restores virility, if it does not. It is difficult to imagine that the baldness remedy Minoxidil would be on the market if it had killed nine French and at least eleven American men. In contrast, the long-te.. equality feminism beauty body-image sexual-violence cosmetic-surgery diet-industry fashion-industry mass-culture objectification plastic-surgery cosmetics images marketing pornography society culture double-standards magazines sexuality eating-disorders self-esteem aging Naomi Wolf
00c53ae Never," enjoins a women's magazine, "mention the size of his [penis] in public...and never, ever let him know that anyone else knows or you may find it shrivels up and disappears, serving you right." That quotation acknowledges that critical sexual comparison is a direct anaphrodisiac when applied to men; either we do not yet recognize that it has exactly the same effect on women, or we do not care, or . A man is unlikely to be brought wit.. equality feminism beauty body-image cosmetic-surgery diet-industry fashion-industry mass-culture objectification plastic-surgery cosmetics images marketing pornography society culture double-standards magazines sexuality self-esteem aging Naomi Wolf
1f6390e Until recently the locus of sexual fantasy was peopled with images actually glimpsed or were sensations actually felt, or private imaginings taken from suggestions in the real world, a dream well where weightless images from it floated, transformed by imagination. It prepared children, with these hints and traces of other people's bodies, to become adults and enter the landscape of adult sexuality and meet the lover face to face. Lucky men .. sex feminism fantasy sexuality Naomi Wolf
daad2ef The sexual revolutionaries of the 1960s, including advocates for 'adult' material such as Hugh Hefner and Al Goldstein, represented porn to us as a great social radicalizer. But a nation of masturbating people who are looking at screens rather than at one another - who are consuming sex like any other product and who are rewiring their brains to find less and less abandon and joy in one another's arms, and to bond more and more with pixels .. Naomi Wolf
77e7a97 Female thinness and youth are not in themselves next to godliness in this culture. Society really doesn't care about women's appearance per se. What genuinely matters is that women remain willing to let others tell them what they can and cannot have. Women are watched, in other words, not to make sure that they will "be good," but to make sure that they will know they are being watched." Naomi Wolf
3f14515 The problem with cosmetics exists only when women feel invisible or inadequate without them. The problem with working out exists only if women hate ourselves when we don't. When a woman is forced to adorn herself to buy a hearing, when she needs her grooming in order to protect her identity, when she goes hungry in order to keep her job, when she must attract a lover so that she can take care of her children, that is exactly what makes "bea.. Naomi Wolf
f4b1bd8 Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only the relations of men to women, but the relation of women to themselves.' Critic John Berger's well-known quote has been true throughout the history of Western culture, and it is more true now than ever. feminism Naomi Wolf
46c6bca Housework's modern status," writes Ann Oakley, "is nonwork." A recent study shows that if housework done by married women were paid, family income would rise by 60 percent. Housework totals forty billion hours of France's labor power. Women's volunteer work in the United States amounts to $18 billion a year. The economics of industrialized countries would collapse if women didn't do the work they do for free: According to economist Marilyn .. Naomi Wolf
57692ac Only God, my dear," wrote Yeats blithely, "Could love you for yourself alone/And not your yellow hair." This quote is meant as a bit of lighthearted verse. But it is an epic tragedy in three lines." Naomi Wolf
1c03d46 Consumer culture is best supported by markets made up of sexual clones, men who want objects and women who want to be objects, and the object desired ever-changing, disposable, and dictated by the market. The beautiful object of consumer pornography has a built-in obsolescence, to ensure that as few men as possible will form a bond with one woman for years or for a lifetime, and to ensure that women's dissatisfaction with themselves will gr.. society self-esteem Naomi Wolf
231953c 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 it is the last, best belief system that keeps male dominance intact. In assigning value to women in a vertical hierarchy according to a culturally imposed physical standard, it is an expression of power relations in which women must unnaturally compete for resources that men have appropriated for themselves... Naomi Wolf
937eaa6 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." Naomi Wolf
6c23cf8 It seemed to me, watching, that if you were dextrous enough to gift-wrap an independent-minded amphibian, you could just about manage a condom. sex safe-sex Naomi Wolf
2ef8f8c 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." equality feminism beauty body-image diets sexual-violence cosmetic-surgery diet-industry fashion-industry mass-culture objectification plastic-surgery cosmetics images marketing pornography society culture double-standards magazines sexuality eating-disorders self-esteem aging Naomi Wolf
67bfba9 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. The.. equality feminism beauty body-image cosmetic-surgery diet-industry fashion-industry mass-culture objectification plastic-surgery cosmetics images marketing pornography society culture double-standards magazines sexuality eating-disorders self-esteem aging Naomi Wolf
1da95c3 what I saw as the negative effect on women's minds of such mundane "tracking" activities as calorie counting, I had sensed that the reason so many tasks women are expected to do in society involve this kind of thinking (e.g. scanning, list making, judging themselves critically, "measuring up") had something to do with the suppressive effect this kind of thinking has on other, bolder kinds of intellectual or emotional leaps." -- Naomi Wolf
1683799 Women are told for so long that our feelings--our internal sensations of pain, pleasure, joy, sadness, or anger--are too much, or wrong, or bad. So eventually we can't stop thinking and thinking about these problems, trying to think them out, but we stop feeling our feelings about them. Naomi Wolf
29e6ecd Women are not wrong if they react instinctively - often jealously - against their partner's interest in porn, since pornography is actually, neurologically, a woman's destructive rival for her man's sexual capabilities. pornography sexuality Naomi Wolf
18d300f Economist Marvin Harris described women as a "literate and docile" labor pool, and "therefore desirable candidates for the information- and people-processing jobs thrown up by modern service industries." The qualities that best serve employers in such a labor pool's workers are: low self-esteem, a tolerance for dull repetitive tasks, lack of ambition, high conformity, more respect for men (who manage them) than women (who work beside them),.. too-real Naomi Wolf
0c7306f What if she doesn't worry about her body and eats enough for all the growing she has to do? She might rip her stockings and slam-dance on a forged ID to the Pogues, and walk home barefoot, holding her shoes, alone at dawn; she might baby-sit in a battered-women's shelter one night a month; she might skateboard down Lombard Street with its seven hairpin turns, or fall in love with her best friend and do something about it, or lose herself fo.. Naomi Wolf
ccdae90 It is their mores, then, that make the Americans of the United States...capable of maintaining the rule of democracy.... Too much importance is attached to laws and too little to mores.... I am convinced that the luckiest of geographical circumstances and the best of laws cannot maintain a constitution in spite of mores, whereas the latter can turn even the most unfavorable circumstances...to advantage.... If I have not succeeded in making .. morality usa liberty constitution values Naomi Wolf
c7d07bf 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. Naomi Wolf
6f4caa7 the central rule of the myth: For every feminist action there is an equal and opposite beauty myth reaction. Naomi Wolf
c68a817 Peace is bad for business. When the former Soviet Union fell apart, the U.S. defense industry was staring into the face of a falling market share: To grow, it would have to find a new enemy. It would also help if it expanded its product line from building fighter jets to the newfangled demand for applications involving surveillance. Naomi Wolf
a9b1517 An economy that depends on slavery needs to promote images of slaves that "justify" the institution of slavery. The contemporary economy depends right now on the representation of women within the beauty myth. Economist John Kenneth Galbraith offers an economic explanation for "the persistence of the view of homemaking as a 'higher calling'": the concept of women as naturally trapped within the Feminine Mystique, he feels, "has been forced .. Naomi Wolf
31c09e3 Only then will women be able to talk about what "beauty" really involves: the attention of people we do not know, rewards for things we did not earn, sex from men who reach for us as for a brass ring on a carousel, hostility and scepticism from other women, adolescence extended longer than it ought to be, cruel aging, and a long hard struggle for identity. And we will learn that what is good about "beauty"--the promise of confidence, sexual.. Naomi Wolf
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