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.
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the unattainable nature of beauty and the resulting disillusionment when expectations are confronted with reality.
Naomi Wolf's quote delves into the concept of the 'beauty myth', suggesting that societal standards of beauty create an illusion that is perpetually out of reach for men. This ever-receding mirage leads to a disconnection when they realize that their fantasies of beauty do not align with reality, ultimately resulting in personal disillusionment rather than true fulfillment.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about societal pressures, one might say, 'As Naomi Wolf suggests, the beauty myth can lead to disillusionment when expectations meet reality.'
More from Naomi Wolf
All quotes →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.
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.
The woman wins who calls herself beautiful, and challenges the world to change to fit her vision.
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.
Peaceful, lawful protest - if it is effective - IS innately disruptive of “business as usual.” That is WHY it is effective.
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People who cannot restrain their own baser instincts, who cannot treat one another with civility, are not capable of self-government... without virtue, a society can be ruled only by fear, a truth that tyrants understand all too well
Most gods throw dice, but Fate plays chess, and you don't find out til too late that he's been playing with two queens all along.
If I was freer than I had ever been in my life, I was not yet entirely free, for I still hung on to an idea that had been set deep in me by all my schooling so far: I was a bright boy and I ought to make something out of myself... something else that would be a cut or two above my humble origins.
As Freud has shown, blunders are not the merest chance. They are the result of suppressed desires and conflicts. They are ripples on the surface of life, produced by unsuspected springs. And these may be very deep - as deep as the soul itself. The blunder may amount to the opening of a destiny.
What I believe in my heart must make sense in my mind.