223 Quotes by Naomi Wolf

Most urgently, women’s identity must be premised upon our ‘beauty’ so that we will remain vulnerable to outside approval, carrying the vital sensitive organ of self-esteem exposed to the air.

Pain is real when you get other people to believe in it. If no one believes in it but you, your pain is madness or hysteria.

We are in the midst of a violent backlash againist feminism that uses images of female beauty as political weapons against women’s advancement.

I’m a big believer in debate and difference of opinion.

What little girls learn is not the desire for the other, but the desire to be desired.

Images of strangled women, women in cages do not push any limits; they are a mainstream cliche of a mainstream social order. Rock music fails to live up to its subversive tradition when it eroticizes the same old establishment sadomasochism rather than playing with gender roles to make us look at them afresh.

For I conclude that the enemy is not lipstick, but guilt itself; that we deserve lipstick, if we want it, AND free speech; we deserve to be sexual AND serious – or whatever we please; we are entitled to wear cowboy boots to our own revolution.

It’s human nature to abuse power, no matter who you are.

At least a third of a woman’s life is marked with aging; about a third of her body is made of fat. Both symbols are being transformed into operable condition.