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Naomi Wolf

File:Naomi_wolf_2012.jpg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons

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Naomi Wolf

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Also known as Naomi R. Wolf, Naomi Rebekah Wolf

American feminist and journalist (born 1962)

Person · Open Library

Born
1962
Works
25

Top works

  • Esh be-esh
  • Vagina : una nueva biografía de la sexualidad femenina. - 1. edición
  • The beauty myth : how images of beauty are used against women
  • Outrages
  • War Room / DailyClout Pfizer Documents Analysis Volunteers' Reports EBook

via Open Library + Wikidata

Music · MusicBrainz

Type
Person
Country
DE
Active from
1938-04-17
Active to
2007-03-10

via MusicBrainz · CC0

Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners
221
Total plays
537

<a href="https://www.last.fm/music/Naomi+Wolff">Read more on Last.fm</a>

via Last.fm · Naomi Wolff

Quotes

  • The beauty myth is always actually prescribing behavior and not appearance.
  • Beauty provokes harassment, the law says, but it looks through men's eyes when deciding what provokes it.
  • To live in a culture in which women are routinely naked where men aren't is to learn inequality in little ways all day long. So even if we agree that sexual imagery is in fact a language, it is clearly one that is already heavily edited to protect men’s sexual—and hence social—confidence while undermining that of women.
  • What becomes of a man who acquires a beautiful woman, with her 'beauty' his sole target? He sabotages himself. He has gained no friend, no ally, no mutual trust: She knows quite well why she has been chosen. He has succeeded in buying a mutually suspicious set of insecurities. He does gain something: the esteem of other men who find such an acquisition impressive.
  • The Victorian woman became her ovaries, as today's woman has become her 'beauty.' Her reproductive value, as the 'aesthetic' value of her face and body today, 'came to be seen as a sacred trust, one that she must constantly guard in the interest of her race.'
  • Health makes good propaganda. “'Proof' that women's activities outside the home are detrimental to the health and welfare of themselves, their families and the country as a whole” lent impetus, writes Ann Oakley, to the nineteenth-century cult of domesticity. The ovaries were seen as collective property rather than the woman's own business, as the face and body outline are seen today. Who can argue with health?

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

Key facts

Born
Naomi Rebekah Wolf , 1962 (age 63 – 64), San Francisco , California , U.S.
Occupation
Author political consultant journalist
Education
Yale University ( BA ), New College, Oxford ( DPhil )
Notable works
The Beauty Myth (1991), The End of America (2007), Misconceptions (2001), Fire with Fire (1993), Outrages (2019)
Spouse
David Shipley ​ ​ ( married</span>"}]]}'>m. 1993 ; divorced</span>"}]]}'>div. 2005 ) ​ Brian O'Shea ​ ( married</span>"}]]}'>m. 2018 ) ​

via Wikipedia infobox

~40 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Naomi Rebekah Wolf (born 1962) is an American feminist author, journalist, and conspiracy theorist. 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, Wolf 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.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Naomi Wolf” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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