In drawing attention to the physical characteristics of women leaders, they can be dismissed as either too pretty or too ugly. The net effect is to prevent women's identification with the issues. If the public women is stigmatized as too 'pretty,' she's a threat, a rival--or simply not serious; if derided as too 'ugly,' one risks tarring oneself with the same brush by identifying oneself with her agenda.
Naomi WolfThe reason I'm voting for Barack Obama is that it's either him or a police state - someone who's carrying on policies that are clearly stated and directed at subverting liberty. He's definitely the lesser of two evils.
Naomi WolfWhen [beauty pornography is] aimed at men, its effect is to keep them from finding peace in sexual love. The fleeting chimera of the airbrushed centerfold, always receding before him, keeps the man destabilized in pursuit, unable to focus on the beauty of the woman--known, marked, lined, familiarโ-who hands him the paper every morning.
Naomi WolfCosmetic surgery and the ideology of self-improvement may have made women's hope for legal recourse to justice obsolete.
Naomi WolfI've never understood this puritanical idea that feminism has to be a cult. You know, we all have to think alike or dress alike or have a similar ideology.
Naomi Wolf