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.
Interpretation
This quote critiques society's obsession with female thinness as a means of controlling women's behavior, rather than a genuine appreciation for beauty.
Naomi Wolf argues that the societal fixation on female thinness serves as a mechanism to enforce obedience among women, implying that dieting is a tool used to keep women subdued and compliant. This quote suggests that the pressure for women to conform to unrealistic beauty standards is not just about aesthetics but is deeply rooted in the politics of control and power dynamics, where a distracted and self-critical population is easier to manage.
In practice
In a discussion about body image during a women's rights seminar.
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.
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.
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.
The dogma of the Incarnation is the most dramatic thing about Christianity, and indeed, the most dramatic thing that ever entered the mind of man; but if you tell people so, they stare at you in bewilderment.
There's no way to escape the fact that we've grown up in a violent culture, we just can't get away from it, it's part of our heritage. I think part of it is that we've always felt somewhat helpless in the face of this vast continent. Helplessness is answered in many ways, but one of them is violence.
To discover the true principles of Morality, men have no need of theology, of revelation, or of gods: They have need only of common sense.
It is not he who reviles or strikes you who insults you, but your opinion that these things are insulting.
The Cheshire Cat only grinned when it saw Alice. It looked good-natured, she thought: still it had very long claws and a great many teeth, so she felt it ought to be treated with respect.
Inner resistance to whatever arises in the present moment pulls you back into unconsciousness. Inner resistance is some form of negativity, complaining, fear, aggression, or anger. This is important because whenever you complain about what somebody else does you're already beginning to fall into that trap of unconsciousness.
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