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
In 70s America, protest used to be very effective, but in subsequent decades municipalities have sneakily created a web of "overpermiticisation" - requirements that were designed to stifle freedom of assembly and the right to petition government for redress of grievances, both of which are part of our first amendment.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights the challenges that activists face due to restrictive regulations on protests and assembly.
Naomi Wolf discusses how, while protest was once a powerful tool for change in 70s America, the introduction of increasingly complex permitting processes has stifled citizens' rights to assemble and petition the government. This reflects a broader concern about the erosion of democratic freedoms and the tactics used to suppress dissent in more recent decades.
Themes
ProtestFreedomAssemblyGovernmentRights
In practice
Example use cases
During a civil rights discussion, this quote can emphasize the importance of protecting the right to 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
Similar quotes
..the establishment of Civil and Religious Liberty was the Motive that induced me to the field of battle.
George WashingtonRead
I will go back to my life when women in captivity go back to their lives, when my community has a place, when I see people accountable for their crimes.
Nadia MuradRead
Struggle is a never ending process. Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation.
Coretta Scott KingRead
I don't think that every single case of sexual harassment has to result in someone being fired; the consequences should vary. But we need a shift in culture so that every single instance of sexual harassment is investigated and dealt with. That's just basic common sense.
Tarana BurkeRead
My concern is not for the judicial system, but for the reality that the shark fin mafia of Costa Rica has a price on my head, and a Costa Rican prison would provide an excellent opportunity for someone to exercise this lethal contract against me.
Paul WatsonRead
It is easy to go down into Hell; night and day, the gates of dark Death stand wide; but to climb back again, to retrace one's steps to the upper air - there's the rub, the task.
VirgilRead