223 Quotes by Naomi Wolf

Since Madonna is positioned as always ‘cooler than thou,’ we all are primed for schadenfreude if something in her fabulous life goes amiss.

There is this giant void in the culture about women in that age group as heroines, as romantic beings, as sexual beings and as creative beings, and there’s not that void for men. Women don’t stop being all those things as their lives continue into those decades.

Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only the relations of men to women, but the relation of women to themselves.′ Critic John Berger’s well-known quote has been true throughout the history of Western culture, and it is more true now than ever.

Women are mere “beauties” in men’s culture so that culture can be kept male. When women in culture show character, they are not desirable, as opposed to the desirable, artless ingenue.

It has been said that each generation must win its own struggle to be free. -Robert F. Kennedy.

When faced with the myth, the questions to ask are not about women’s faces and bodies but about the power relations of the situation. Who is this serving? Who says? Who profits? When someone discusses a woman’s appearance to her face, she can ask herself, is it that person’s business? Are the power relations equal? Would she feel comfortable making the same personal comments in return?

Dieting makes women think of ourselves as sick, religious babies.

Sexiness is no longer defined just as whether we are desirable, but also what we desire. The more liberated women become – economically, politically, and personally – the more erotic we are. Freedom is a lot sexier than dependency.

Women are told for so long that our feelings – our internal sensations of pain, pleasure, joy, sadness, or anger – are too much, or wrong, or bad. So eventually we can’t stop thinking and thinking about these problems, trying to think them out, but we stop feeling our feelings about them.