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.
Naomi WolfRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights how women's appearance can distract from their ideas and contributions, framing their insights as personal rather than societal issues.
Naomi Wolf's quote emphasizes the social tendency to diminish women's voices by focusing critically on their physical appearance. Even when women articulate observations about societal beauty standards, their commentary is often reduced to a personal issue instead of being recognized as a broader critique, suggesting a systemic bias that undermines women's credibility and amplifies societal pressures around beauty.
Themes
AppearanceSocietyBeautyWomenMythCritiqueIssues
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a discussion about feminism and the portrayal of women in media.
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.
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
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