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After reading The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf, her position on “UK feminist TERFs” is a testament to how powerful this movement is & what it demands of women w public profiles who do not want ruthless media derision.
Completely irreconcilable.
Some select quotes:
—1/
Completely irreconcilable.
Some select quotes:
—1/
"Culture stereotypes women to fit the myth by flattening the feminine into beauty-without-intelligence or intelligence-without-beauty; women are allowed a mind or a body but not both."
—2/
—2/
"Cosmetic surgery is not & #39;cosmetic& #39; & human flesh is not & #39;plastic.& #39; Even the names trivialize what it is. It& #39;s not like ironing wrinkles in fabric, or tuning up a car, or altering outmoded clothes, the current metaphors. Trivialization & infantilization pervade the [...]
—3/
—3/
surgeons& #39; language when they speak to women: "a nip," a "tummy tuck."...Surgery changes one forever, the mind as well as the body. If we don& #39;t start to speak of it as serious, the millennium of the man-made woman will be upon us, and we will have had no choice."
—4/
—4/
"The surgeons& #39; market is imaginary, since there is nothing wrong with women& #39;s faces or bodies that social change won& #39;t cure; so the surgeons depend for their income on warping female self-perception and multiplying female self-hatred."
—5/
—5/
"Looking back on 200 years of feminist agitation, we& #39;ve got to get it that the moral high ground doesn& #39;t get us anything. Pleading w powerful men never gets us what we need. Talking doesn& #39;t do it. Being right doesn& #39;t do it. Hardball politics..&political strategy does it."
—6/
—6/
"Whatever is deeply, essentially female— the life in a woman& #39;s expression, the feel of her flesh, the shape of her breasts, the transformations after childbirth of her skin— is reclassified as ugly, & ugliness as a disease. These qualities are about an intensification[...]
—7/
—7/
of female power, which explains why they& #39;re recast as a diminution of power."
“Western womn are controlled by ideals & stereotypes as much as by material constraints.”
"As women demanded access to power, the power structure uses the beauty myth to materially undermine [..]
—8/
“Western womn are controlled by ideals & stereotypes as much as by material constraints.”
"As women demanded access to power, the power structure uses the beauty myth to materially undermine [..]
—8/
women& #39;s advancement."
“A consequnce of female self-love is that the woman grows convinced of social worth. Her love for her body will be unqualified,which is the basis of female identification. If a woman loves her own body;if she loves femaleness,she champions its rights.”
—9/
“A consequnce of female self-love is that the woman grows convinced of social worth. Her love for her body will be unqualified,which is the basis of female identification. If a woman loves her own body;if she loves femaleness,she champions its rights.”
—9/
“A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty,but an obsession about female obedience.”
"Pain is real when you get other people to believe in it. If no one believes in it but you, your pain is madness or hysteria"
—10/
"Pain is real when you get other people to believe in it. If no one believes in it but you, your pain is madness or hysteria"
—10/
“Why does the social order feel the need to defend itself by evading the fact of real women, our faces and voices and bodies, and reducing the meaning of women to these formulaic and endlessly reproduced & #39;beautiful& #39; images?”
—11/
—11/
"You do not win by struggling to the top of a caste system, you win by refusing to be trapped within 1 at all."
"The beauty myth is always actually prescribing behaviour and not appearance"
—12/
"The beauty myth is always actually prescribing behaviour and not appearance"
—12/
"The attraction is that it is not a woman, but a two-dimensional woman-shaped blank. The appeal of the material is not the fantasy that the model will come to life; it is precisely that she will not, ever. Her coming to life would ruin the vision. It is not about life." — 13/end
great book btw..came highly recommend by two terfs in a trench coat.
*recommended
