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 womenβs history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.
Naomi WolfRead
A Mother who radiates self-love and self-acceptance actually VACCINATES her daughter against low self-esteem.
Interpretation
What this quote means
A mother's self-love positively influences her daughter's self-esteem.
This quote emphasizes the importance of a mother's self-love and acceptance in shaping her daughter's self-esteem. By modeling these positive traits, a mother provides a protective influence that helps her daughter develop confidence and a healthy self-image, thereby 'vaccinating' her against the negative effects of low self-esteem that can arise from societal pressures or insecurities.
Themes
Self-LoveSelf-AcceptanceMotherhoodSelf-EsteemDaughter
In practice
Example use cases
In a parenting workshop, discussing how mothers can positively influence their children's self-worth.
More from Naomi Wolf
All quotes βLooking 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
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As a child, the family that I had and the love I had from my two parents allowed me to go ahead and be more aggressive, to search and to take risks knowing that, if I failed, I could always come home to a family of love and support.
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The older I grow the more I see the influence of my family on my life. I didn't always see it. It was up to our parents to see that we had our education in a town that hadn't yet realized what racial prejudice was but actually knew and practiced it on occasion.
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