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Beauty" and sexuality are both commonly misunderstood as some transcendent inevitable fact; falsely interlocking the two makes it seem doubly true that a woman must be "beautiful" to be sexual. That of course is not true at all. The definitions of both "beautiful" and "sexual" constantly change to serve the social order, and the connection between the two is a recent invention.

Naomi Wolf

Stichwörter: sexuality equality self-esteem beauty society advertising feminism culture magazines aging cosmetics double-standards objectification body-image marketing pornography eating-disorders images sexual-violence plastic-surgery diet-industry cosmetic-surgery fashion-industry mass-culture

Self-denial can lock women into a smug and critical condescension to other, less devout women.

According to Appel, cult members develop..."an attitude of moral superiority, a contempt for secular laws, rigidity of thought, and the diminution of regard for the individual." A premium is placed on conformity to the cult group; deviation is penalized. "Beauty" is derivative; conforming to the Iron Maiden [an intrinsically unattainable standard of beauty that is then used to punish women physically and psychologically for failure to achieve and conform to it] is "beautiful." The aim of beauty thinking, about weight or age, is rigid female thought. Cult members are urged to sever all ties with the past: "I destroyed all my fat photographs!"; "It's a new me!

Naomi Wolf

Stichwörter: sexuality equality self-esteem beauty society advertising feminism culture magazines aging dieting cosmetics double-standards objectification body-image marketing pornography eating-disorders images sexual-violence plastic-surgery diet-industry cosmetic-surgery fashion-industry mass-culture

What editors are obliged to appear to say that men want from women is actually what their advertisers want from women.

Naomi Wolf

Stichwörter: sexuality equality self-esteem beauty society conformity advertising feminism culture magazines aging cosmetics double-standards objectification body-image marketing pornography eating-disorders images sexual-violence plastic-surgery diet-industry cosmetic-surgery fashion-industry mass-culture

A man is unlikely to be brought within earshot of women as they judge men's appearance, height, muscle tone, sexual technique, penis size, personal grooming, or taste in clothes--all of which we do. The fact is that women are able to view men just as men view women, as objects for sexual and aesthetic evaluation; we too are effortlessly able to choose the male "ideal" from a lineup and if we could have male beauty as well as everything else, most of us would not say no. But so what? Given all that, women make the choice, by and large, to take men as human beings first.

Naomi Wolf

Stichwörter: sexuality equality self-esteem beauty society advertising feminism culture magazines aging cosmetics double-standards objectification body-image marketing pornography images sexual-violence plastic-surgery diet-industry cosmetic-surgery fashion-industry mass-culture

Women could probably be trained quite easily to see men first as sexual things. If girls never experienced sexual violence; if a girl's only window on male sexuality were a stream of easily available, well-lit, cheap images of boys slightly older than herself, in their late teens, smiling encouragingly and revealing cuddly erect penises the color of roses or mocha, she might well look at, masturbate to, and, as an adult, "need" beauty pornography based on the bodies of men. And if those initiating penises were represented to the girl as pneumatically erectible, swerving neither left nor right, tasting of cinnamon or forest berries, innocent of random hairs, and ever ready; if they were presented alongside their measurements, length, and circumference to the quarter inch; if they seemed to be available to her with no troublesome personality attached; if her sweet pleasure seemed to be the only reason for them to exist--then a real young man would probably approach the young woman's bed with, to say the least, a failing heart.

Naomi Wolf

What are other women really thinking, feeling, experiencing, when they slip away from the gaze and culture of men?

Naomi Wolf

Beauty provokes harassment, the law says, but it looks through men's eyes when deciding what provokes it.

Naomi Wolf

Stichwörter: sexuality equality self-esteem beauty society advertising feminism law rape culture magazines aging cosmetics double-standards objectification body-image marketing pornography eating-disorders images sexual-violence harassment sexual-harassment plastic-surgery diet-industry cosmetic-surgery fashion-industry mass-culture

Being female in this world means having been robbed of the potential for human choice by men who love to hate us. One does does not make choices in freedom. Instead, one conforms in body type and behavior and values to become an object of male sexual desire, which requires an abandonment of a wide-ranging capacity for choice...

Men too make choices. When will they choose not to despise us?

Andrea Dworkin

Stichwörter: men women choice morality freedom feminism oppression objectification patriarchy

Calling something exotic emphasizes its distance from the reader. We don’t refer to things as exotic if we think of them as ordinary. We call something exotic if it’s so different that we see no way to emulate it or understand how it came to be. We call someone exotic if we aren’t especially interested in viewing them as people — just as objects representing their culture.

N.K. Jemisin

Stichwörter: objectification exoticism