Naomi Wolf Quote
The beauty myth sets it up this way: A high rating as an art object is the most valuable tribute a woman can exact from her lover. If he appreciates her face and body because it is hers, that is next to worthless. It is very neat: The myth contrives to make women offend men by scrutinizing honest appreciation when they give it; it can make men offend women merely by giving them honest appreciation. It can manage to contaminate the sentence You're beautiful, which is next to I love you in expressing a bond of regard between a woman and a man. A man cannot tell a woman that he loves to look at her without risking making her unhappy. If he never tells her, she is to be unhappy. And the luckiest woman of all, told she is loved because she's beautiful, is often tormented because she lacks the security of being desired because she looks like who she lovably is.
The beauty myth sets it up this way: A high rating as an art object is the most valuable tribute a woman can exact from her lover. If he appreciates her face and body because it is hers, that is next to worthless. It is very neat: The myth contrives to make women offend men by scrutinizing honest appreciation when they give it; it can make men offend women merely by giving them honest appreciation. It can manage to contaminate the sentence You're beautiful, which is next to I love you in expressing a bond of regard between a woman and a man. A man cannot tell a woman that he loves to look at her without risking making her unhappy. If he never tells her, she is to be unhappy. And the luckiest woman of all, told she is loved because she's beautiful, is often tormented because she lacks the security of being desired because she looks like who she lovably is.
Related Quotes
About Naomi Wolf
After the 1991 publication of her first book, The Beauty Myth, Wolf became a prominent figure in the third wave of the feminist movement. Feminists including Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan praised her work. Others, including Camille Paglia, criticized it. In the 1990s, she was a political advisor to the presidential campaigns of Bill Clinton and Al Gore.
Wolf's later books include the bestseller The End of America in 2007 and Vagina: A New Biography. Critics have challenged the quality and accuracy of her books' scholarship; her serious misreading of court records for Outrages (2019) led to its U.S. publication being canceled. Wolf's career in journalism has included topics such as abortion and the Occupy Wall Street movement in articles for media outlets such as The Nation, The New Republic, The Guardian, and The Huffington Post.
Since around 2014, Wolf has been described by journalists and media outlets as a conspiracy theorist. She has been criticized for posting misinformation on topics such as beheadings carried out by ISIS, the Western African Ebola virus epidemic, and Edward Snowden.
Wolf has objected to COVID-19 lockdowns and criticized COVID-19 vaccines. In June 2021, her Twitter account was suspended for posting anti-vaccine misinformation.