Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth Quotes

As women demanded access to power, the power structure used the beauty myth materially to undermine women's advancement.

Beauty discrimination has become necessary, not from the perception that women will not be good enough, but that they will be, as they have been, twice as good.

You do not win by struggling to the top of a caste system, you win by refusing to be trapped within one at all.

She wins who calls herself beautiful and challenges the world to change to truly see her.

Are women beautiful or aren't we?

Only God, my dear, ” wrote Yeats blithely, “Could love you for yourself alone/And not your yellow hair.” This quote is meant as a bit of lighthearted verse. But it is an epic tragedy in three lines.

We need to insist on making culture out of our desire: making paintings, novels, plays and films potent and seductive and authentic enough to undermine and overwhelm the Iron Maiden.

Advertisers are the West's courteous censors.

What little girls learn is not the desire for the other, but the desire to be desired.

Women are mere “beauties” in men’s culture so that culture can be kept male. When women in culture show character, they are not desirable, as opposed to the desirable, artless ingenue.