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
The idea that women are innately gentle is a fantasy, and a historically recent one. Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction, is depicted as wreathed in male human skulls; the cruel entertainments of the Romans drew audiences as female as they were male; Boudicca led her British troops bloodily into battle.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote critiques the stereotype of women's innate gentleness by highlighting historical examples of female strength and violence.
Naomi Wolf challenges the perception that women are naturally gentle or nurturing by referencing powerful female figures from history, such as the goddess Kali and warrior Boudicca, who embody strength and ferocity. She suggests that the belief in women's inherent gentleness is a modern fantasy, ignoring the complexities and diverse roles women have played throughout history, including those that are assertive and violent.
Themes
WomenStrengthViolenceHistoryGoddessFeminism
In practice
Example use cases
In a seminar on women's studies, this quote can be used to challenge stereotypes about female behavior.
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
I think it would collapse my heart if I was super famous. I don't have the nerve for it, I'm too anxious. I don't know how you're not obsessed with how people perceive you, because they're real people, you know? You can convince yourself that they don't really know you, and that's true, but how can it not hurt your feelings?
Bo BurnhamRead
Your world is a living expression of how you are using and have used your mind.
Earl NightingaleRead
Sometimes people leave you halfway through the wood. Others may decieve you - you decide what's good. You decide alone, but no one is alone. People make mistakes. Fathers, mothers, people make mistakes, holding to their own, thinking they're alone. Honor their mistakes. Fight for their mistakes. Witches can be right. Giants can be good. You decide what's right. You decide what's good.
Stephen SondheimRead
What is characteristic of illusions is that they are derived from human wishes.
Sigmund FreudRead
Necessity is the most powerful divinity the world knows – it is the result of physical forces set in operation by ethical forces.
Jose RizalRead
There is nothing more horrifying than stupidity in action.
Jawaharlal NehruRead