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
Peaceful, lawful protest - if it is effective - IS innately disruptive of “business as usual.” That is WHY it is effective.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Effective protests challenge the status quo and demand attention for critical issues.
Naomi Wolf emphasizes that peaceful and lawful protests are inherently disruptive to routine societal norms and behaviors. This disruption is a key component of their effectiveness, as it brings attention to injustice and compels society to reconsider its values and practices.
Themes
ProtestDisruptionChangeSocietyEffectiveness
In practice
Example use cases
In speeches about civil rights movements, one could use this quote to highlight the importance of protest.
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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The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.
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Women may be the one group that grows more radical with age.
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I walk slowly, but never backwards.
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