Naomi WolfRecensioni

I couldn’t finish. The author takes a swing at an interesting topic and misses. Overall the book just felt lazy. She lost me when she vastly glosses over misinformation on the Internet while making a comparison that just doesn’t stand up. Just all over the place.

Good arguments but presented really poorly. The first couple of chapters talk about the beauty myth like a conspiracy, as if there's a group of men holding meetings going "Hmm, how shall we make women feel inferior this time?" Naomi Wolf never clearly identifies "the oppressors" (which I infer from the text that it's a combination of various factors, including social hierarchy, the economy, and so on) though she does mention much later in the book that regular men are not into the thinness and beauty standards set by the beauty myth. For most of the book she writes as if women are victims with no agency of their own, and her very brief discussion of eating disorders reduces the women who suffer from them to victims who caved into societal and cultural pressure, whereas it comes from a combination of things including depression and genetics, rather than simply aggressive advertising. It's really a shame, since this is such an important topic that everyone, male or female, should read about, but it's just written about so poorly here, with little evidence to back things up. Despite these flaws, Wolf does, however, paint a very clear and precise picture of the ways that women's minds and bodies are attacked (psychologically, metaphorically) on a daily basis.

I've never been a supporter of the ACLU, specifically because they tend to make news when they've helped free a known guilty party on some flimsy technicality, and it offends my sense of right and wrong. And the ACLU will say, I'm sure, that they perform an essential service in our Democracy and protecting the rights of all citizens by keeping the Government from gradually encroaching upon our Constitutionally guaranteed rights. Naomi Wolf, in her book, seems to make the case of the importance of the ACLU without ever mentioning them. The point of her book, as I see it, is that our freedom and democracy can only be maintained by being vigilant and watchful, and protective against gradual government incursions into our guaranteed freedoms. The book is somewhat dated reading it in 2012, since the target of most of her barbs are directed at the Bush Administration. While sounding something like a Handbook of Paranoia, Naomi Wolf cites example after example of how our post-9/11 government has started on a path of restricting individual liberty through passing the Patriot Act, giving authority to the President to designate anyone, citizen or non-citizen, an enemy combatant and lock him / her away without safeguards, by setting up Guantanamo and secret renditions of suspects, by intimidating professors or political opponents, etc. And she then goes on to show how various totalitarian governments in the past such as Stalin's Soviet Republic, Hitler's German Republic, or Mussolini's Fascist Italy used similar tactics to gradually restrict individual liberty in those countries, and impose their will over the people in their individual power grabs. Her point being that we have to be mindful of these encroachments, not passively accept them, and be vigilant in order to protect our freedom and liberties.

Naomi Wolf's largest problem is her intense laser like focus on all things George W. Bush. Unfortunately, the Patriot Act was not passed by a single party: only one man in the Senate had the bravery to vote no. Otherwise, her ten steps ring particularly true.

Very interesting read on how a government goes wrong - you can recognize a lot of the Bush government, and in South Africa, a lot of the ANC .....

this is outdated, both in the sense that i didn't find a lot of new-to-me concepts and ideas, and that the information in here is old and not very relatable. in fact, i ended up scanning just about the entire book.

i usually feel like i read each book that i read at just the time i'm supposed to. but this was definitely not true for this book. coming right on the heels of the new jim crow was particularly unfortunate for my reading of this book because of how much more the other resonated. partly it was that this was mostly not new information to me and so not revelatory, but this also wasn't in any way intersectional. it's very much a critique for straight white women, which just isn't that useful.

i remember slowly coming into this information when i was younger (starting around when this edition came out, actually) and finding it life-changing. so maybe had i read this book then, or even before then, it would have been a foundational text for me. that even seems likely. so it's too bad it came to me when it did.

Wolf wrote this during the GW Bush administration. She saw signs of totalitarianism developing, particularly after the events of 9/11/2001. She saw citizens being stripped of their rights for "national security". She saw increases in surveillance of ordinary citizens. She saw restrictions on the press. In fact, she saw the same shifts in our government as the citizens of Nazi Germany saw before WWII, as citizens of other governments saw before their democracies moved to dictatorships.

So she wrote this "letter" to an actual young activist, warning him and us of the dangers of complacency, the need to be aware of the twilight - that time between light and dark, when all seems to be fine, but isn't.

Each chapter addresses a specific signal that the shift is happening in this country. For example: "Invoke an internal and external threat". "Infiltrate citizens' groups". "Arbitrarily detain and release citizens". "Cast criticism as 'espionage' and dissent as 'treason'". There are ten such chapters, ten warning signs. Followed by a conclusion: The Patriot's Task.

Our government, says Wolf, was founded on the requirement that citizens must be alert and involved. If we give up that position we will be giving up our democracy.

Simply and clearly written, this book can be read in a day.

I know that Ms. Wolf is widely held as an expert on this subject and this is one of the major treatises on the subject, but this was very difficult to read because the ideas seemed to jump from one sentence to the next. I only picked it up for class, but I don't have any intention of reading any of her other essays.

It wasn’t until well after I read this book that I found out how controversial it is. In gathering her facts, she misread court records. Where she saw the words “Death recorded” she took it to mean that the accused was hanged. In reality, that shorthand meant that the death sentence had been commuted, and the accused allowed to live. She also missed that in those days, ‘sodomy’ did not just apply to anal sex between males, but also applied to child abuse. There were probably no executions for consensual sex- but there *was* hard labor, as Oscar Wilde discovered.

Wolf writes that 1857 was a year when being gay became a crime, or became more of a crime. The laws against homosexuality had been on the books for years. It was the year when the Obscene Publications Act was enacted; it allowed the courts to seize books on the mere suspicion of being obscene- without defining obscenity. The Contagious Diseases Act was put in place in 1864. This act allowed the police to seize any woman force her to submit to a vaginal exam; if they felt she was infected, she was imprisoned. The act also allowed them to examine male anuses; if dilated, the man must be gay. So it was a time of anti-sex legislation.

The author uses the lives of a few gay men to demonstrate what life was like them, and the book does give you a feel for the era.

The book has been withdrawn by the publisher; I have no idea if Wolf will rewrite it, if it will be published as is, or if its publication will be canceled.

Okay, I'll get it out of the way right up front. I'm beginning to realize that Chelsea Green does not do a good job of editing books. Some of the errors here were so blatant a third grader could have spotted them. Okay, got that off my chest. Now to the book itself. The book was written during the closing years of the Bush 43 administration, amid the writer's concern that we were moving toward fascism. It would be easy to dismiss that idea when the Obama years seemed so much more democratic (but were they?), but now that we are entering the countdown to 2020 with another budding fascist in the White House, it is frightening to look back on the things Congress was doing to give away their power to the president, and in some cases, power that no one is supposed to have because the Constitution forbids it. Most of this happened unnoticed, some of it even in the middle of the night, and only such as were political junkies even knew it happened. Many of us weren't sure what it all meant. The author does a good job of laying that out, of examining the various tools that Congress and the people willingly handed over to a president who has been gaining power for at least a century. Nearly all, if not all, of those tools still remain in place, and can be picked up at any time by a president who lacks integrity and desires absolute power. The author examines other dictatorships around the world, especially those that grew out of democracy like fascist Italy and Nazi Germany - not implying that our country was Nazi Germany, but just looking at the ways in which democracy can be subverted in a very short period of time. Should be required reading in all Civics classes, if only we taught such a thing anymore (and the English teachers could use it to demonstrate how to find sentences missing words or with added words, or with bad punctuation - a double win for a small book).

What I learned from this book: a heightened sensibility of how we honor or deny women’s desire. I’ve been taking Naomi Wolf’s thesis seriously, that in the last 40/50 years we’ve learned to dis a woman’s sexual desire.
Take the word “slut” for example; what is it really meant to connote? I was watching a YouTube video (Smosh Snatchers) recently, which has had over 1.5 million views. It’s one in a popular series by two young men. One girl hands another a screwdriver – “Because you like to screw.” “Are you calling me a slut?” The other responds, “It’s not an insult if it’s a fact.” And a brawl ensues because one clearly thinks it’s an insult.
We can’t, on the other hand, insult a man by calling him a slut, unless, interestingly enough, he is gay. Both genders can be promiscuous (“sleeping around”) but slut has its own loaded meaning quite apart from multiple partners. It means someone who ENJOYS it.
A movie like Caramel,on the other hand, which I watched last night with insight newly sharpened by this book, is a celebration of women’s desire in the midst of cultural confusion.
Ms. Wolf mourns the loss of ritual and community which honor a woman’s desire. I think she is yearning for what might be called a theology of the body.

A good book with deep and important connections revealed and explained. It left me wanting in some areas.

I liked this book much better the second time. It’s hard to get down the first time, although not because the ideas are complicated. They’re not. But they’re the water the fish swims in.

There are a lot of good points Naomi makes about the pressure women face when it comes to being a "beauty" and how no matter how we dress or what we do, we can't win. My issue with this book is that it doesn't explore in depth the rise of the beauty myth in advertising and because of that it reads like a conspiracy theory to keep women down, rather than try to look at other factors that played a role. Still an interesting read, especially from a historical standpoint because you can see how we have progressed and where we are still experiencing the same problems from when this book was written in the early 90s.

Despite being nearly 30 years old its still a solid and relevant read.

I have mixed feelings about this book. On one hand, I think women and girls should know everything there is to know about their body. I like knowing that there are two different nerve clusters in my vulva.

On the other hand, I was confused and annoyed by the terms the author uses. She uses vagina both for the vagina and to mean vulva. She also introduces other terms, such as the "goddess array", and I'm often unsure as to what she is referring to. I also didn't like her section that refers to male and female brains, as if the differences in our brain structures are significant, which they aren't. Nor did I like the reasons she gives for women to be attracted to abusers. It is much more complicated than what she says (that it is natural) and is instead due to the influence of a patriarchal society.

She also criticizes radical feminism with what I think was a lack of understanding of it.

Overall, I liked this book, but was annoyed with the style and the way she wasn't consistent with terms and often used them incorrectly (vagina is the birth canal, not the entire female genitals!!). I also didn't like her style of writing in this book. I did finda few topics I'd like to explore further. Too bad she didn't explore those in further detail.

I enjoyed the book but kept getting angry every time it points out how girls and women are treated. Naomi Wolf makes point after point of how religion, media, and advertising are hurting girls and women. The daily attacks on us need to stop, we are not and have never been something to dice up and sell.

This should be required reading for anyone who owns a vagina and anyone who would like to have a sexual relationship with someone who owns a vagina. It's a fascinating exploration of science, social history, literature and pornography in relation to the female sex organs, particularly focusing on the close relationship between a woman's emotional wellbeing and her sexual experiences. Naomi Wolf has done extensive research and presents her findings in a very accessible and quietly humorous way which is easy to read. The chapters on porn and on the systematic use of rape in wartime to subdue women were more challenging and heart-breaking to read, but important to know about.

Minor editing point - the green Teletubby is Dipsy, not Ditsy. ;-)

A "letter' written by Wolf during the George W Bush era detailing why she believes that the Republican party is strategizing to become a permanent majority and keep control of the US government. She lists the ten steps a leader will take to " close down a democracy or crush a prodemocratic movement, whether by capitalists, communists or right-wing fascists."

The ten steps:
1) Invoke an External and Internal Treat
2) Establish secret prisons
3) Develop a Paramilitary Force
4) Survey Ordinary Citizens
5) Infiltrate Citizen Groups
6) Arbitrarily Detain and Release Civilians
7) Target Key Individuals
8) Restrict the Press
9) Cast Criticism as "espionage" and Dissent as 'treason"
10) Subvert the rule of law

Wolf gives examples of how GWB put all these steps into action. The book was written before Obama won the 2008 election. According to Wolf if the Republicans had won America would have become a fascist state. Now the USA has a new president who is already putting these steps into action. Some of them he can skip -- the secret prisons and paramilitary forces of the Bush era still exist. It's a very scary time. Wolf's main advice to defeat a fascist take over of the government, is for all Americans to become and remain "awoke".

I have taken a long two months to read this book mainly because I was re-reading portions from it to understand this concept of beauty centralised in our lives. This word 'beauty' itself is so overused and abused in terms of describing women, almost caricaturing them to a term, superficially by means of their physical appearances.

So what makes BEAUTY such a constant hot topic among women and men alike? Men admire, adore, fall for beautiful women and women keep trying to control, preserve and look consistent with their beautiful faces and bodies. How is a writer from a western country tackling notions of beauty and how are they relevant to women from the East? For one, The beauty myth is a global phenomena that is surprisingly quite established in women’s psyche since centuries. To put it in a better way, its a myth that found its way throughout different ages, civilizations as a means of sexual attraction for reproduction. In a far away place, men liked their women to paint their faces or sculpt their bodies so that it could titillate them. Women’s bodies were enjoyed as objects because of the supremacy of male hierarchy. The connotations of weak, slender, fragile were associated with women since they were engaged in child rearing and motherhood. The male domination came from the fact that the one who provided for food was the one who had more natural superiority and this drew a fine, invisible, unspoken line between the two genders.

This book by Wolf looks at women in work culture where their beauty is often propagated as an essential means of their performance. Beautiful faces get more respect than plain, unpainted faces. Attractive women are seen as spokeswomen, receptionists, airline crew, secretaries, recreation staff. Their pleasant faces and radiant smiles are supposed to drive your exhaustion away. The prettier you are, more social circles will willingly take you in. What happens to women with not-so-pretty faces? They live sometimes visible, sometimes invisible lives. The book talks about sexuality and because it's not easily co-related to with the women from East, one would think it's not an important issue for women all over the world. Because this book was written in 1990, we would have thought times have changed, that after 25 odd years, women and beauty won’t be given much thought to. We are wrong. Women still get judged on parameters of beauty. There is always the perfect hair, perfect height, perfect body, perfect waistlines, perfect calves. What part of women’s bodies have not gone through a sceptic’s eye? Every inch of women’s bodies is supposed to be perfect, down to a number published by some cynic that got global recognition and due. All civilizations lapped it. Women everywhere long for images that are bombarded through media, advertisements, cinema, art and all sorts of propaganda machinery available to the big bosses that run the beauty business.

The book takes on even more powerful and raw challenges on women and culture, their images and stand in religion everywhere, and ultimately on violence. This is one book that ought to bring out all the subsided anger within women and men who think pro-actively for women. When men talk ignorantly about the need for feminism, give them this book to read and think, if they can, on the superficial world they have created by and large for themselves. Not any more. To women, I say, READ this book. A 25 year time gap has not changed anything about the perceived status and images of women, worldwide. Feminist or not-feminist, we need such texts to keep hammering our selves with the right questions and hopefully find their answers too.

Trite and unconvincing. Stereotypes abound. Nothing new was said. I guess it is a bit dated, but still.

Rather like Greer, Wolf is a writer who makes me think. Neither make an easy read; I spend a great deal of time disagreeing with them and then yet more time trying to work out exactly why I am disagreeing with them. Both make though-provoking books. Sadly, in Wolf's case, most of the disagreement comes from her referring to things through the lens of feminism and forsaking all others. Whilst the book has many references at the back, it is not clear when she is using her references or merely drawing parallels between unrelated things.

The new comprehensive scientific and not so scientific word on the subject.

The book The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf is split off into chapters which depict how beauty images are used against women in different sectors of life.The first chapter speaks about religion.This section of the the book was very interesting to me. It definitely made me question the the beliefs that I have been raised with. I like that the book made me reflect and wonder about how these religious norms that have been drilled into my head, are really affecting my thoughts of myself. Naomi Wolf talks about how young girls become concerned with their appearance at an early age and how their upbringing may affect this. I agree with a lot of the points that Wolf brings up in this section. I believe in god but the points brought up by the author forced me to question my beliefs, and I believe that questioning is always necessary. The book gave me a new perspective on religion and made me realize that some factors of fit may affect society today and in the past.Naomi Wolf’s next topic is how images of beauty are used against women in our culture. In many books and romance novels, the hero is always the man, the woman is often depicted as a damsel in distress who needs saving. These books are directed towards a female audience, subliminally changing their images of themselves.I have never really thought about the gender roles that often times go into novels of today’s day and age, and of novels of the past.A girl’s early education often consists of reading books like these, making her susceptible to the effects of perceived gender roles. This book opened my eyes to the idea of beauty being used against women in various sectors of life. After reading it I felt like my mind was enriched and like I had gained new insight about the world around me.

This was a very intersting book on a topic that is rarely discussed. The book is aimed at a female audience but I felt that I learned alot about female sexual response and male involvement in this. I hope to appropriate some of what I learned and become more in tune with the needs of women. I wish that I had read this many years ago.