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To live in a culture in which women are routinely naked where men aren't is to learn inequality in little ways all day long. So even if we agree that sexual imagery is in fact a language, it is clearly one that is already heavily edited to protect men’s sexual—and hence social—confidence while undermining that of women.

— Naomi Wolf The Beauty Myth (1991)

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More quotes by Naomi Wolf

The beauty myth is always actually prescribing behavior and not appearance.

The Beauty Myth (1991)

The First Amendment was designed to allow for disruption of business as usual. It is not a quiet and subdued amendment or right.

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

The Beauty Myth (1991)

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

The Beauty Myth (1991)

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

The Beauty Myth (1991)

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Naomi Wolf (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.