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 womenβs history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.
Naomi WolfRead
A cultural fixation on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty but an obsession about female obedience.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote critiques societal standards that equate female beauty with thinness, highlighting issues of control and compliance.
Naomi Wolf's quote suggests that the societal emphasis on female thinness goes beyond a mere appreciation of beauty; it reflects a deeper cultural demand for women's compliance and obedience. In this context, the obsession with thinness serves as a mechanism to enforce conformity and restrict women's autonomy, ultimately impacting how they view themselves and their roles in society.
Themes
ThinnessBeautyObedienceSocietyControl
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion on body image during a women's empowerment workshop.
More from Naomi Wolf
All quotes βLooking 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.
Naomi WolfRead
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.
Naomi WolfRead
The woman wins who calls herself beautiful, and challenges the world to change to fit her vision.
Naomi WolfRead
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.
Naomi WolfRead
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.
Naomi WolfRead
Similar quotes
Know not to revere human things too much.
AeschylusRead
The issue is not whether there are horrible cases where the penalty seems "right". The real question is whether we will ever design a capital system that reaches only the "right" cases, without dragging in the wrong cases, cases of innocence or cases where death is not proportionate punishment. Slowly, even reluctantly, I have realized the answer to that question is no- we will never get it right.
Scott TurowRead
Every man is of importance to himself.
Samuel JohnsonRead
The piercing nail has become a key to unlock the door, that I may see the good will of the Lord. And what can I see as I look through the hole? Both the nail and the wound cry out that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself... Through these sacred wounds we can see the secret of his heart, the great mystery of love.
Bernard Of ClairvauxRead
Pathetic attitudes are not in keeping with greatness.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
I am an Anglo-Catholic in religion, a classicist in literature and a royalist in politics.
T. S. EliotRead