The beauty myth of the present is more insidious than any mystique of femininity yet: A century ago, Nora slammed the door of the doll's house; a generation ago, women turned their backs on the consumer heaven of the isolated multiapplianced home; but where women are trapped today, there is no door to slam. The contemporary ravages of the beauty backlash are destroying women physically and depleting us psychologically. If we are to free ourselves from the dead weight that has once again been made out of femaleness, it is not ballots or lobbyists or placards that women will need first; it is a new way to see. Naomi Wolf
About This Quote

Of all the myths that have been perpetuated about women, by far the most destructive is the idea that we are only ever beautiful on the outside. In a culture where all of us are told we look different on the inside, it becomes easy to see how we can start to believe that our own unique inner qualities don't matter. If we begin to look at ourselves differently, if we begin to see our strengths and talents and not just our flaws, this begins to change our perceptions of ourselves. If we look at ourselves as whole human beings, then we start to realize that beauty is something that happens from the inside out, not from the outside in.

Source: The Beauty Myth

Some Similar Quotes
  1. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection - Sharon Salzberg

  2. In youth, it was a way I had, To do my best to please. And change, with every passing lad To suit his theories. But now I know the things I know And do the things I do, And if you do not like me... - Dorothy Parker

  3. You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and... - Sharon Salzberg

  4. That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is. Most people love you for who you pretend to be. To keep their love, you keep pretending - performing. You get to love your pretence. <span style="margin:15px; display:block"></span>It's true, we're... - Jim Morrison

  5. It is an absolute human certainty that no one can know his own beauty or perceive a sense of his own worth until it has been reflected back to him in the mirror of another loving, caring human being. - John Joseph Powell

More Quotes By Naomi Wolf
  1. Dissident Natan Sharansky writes that there are two kinds of states -- "fear societies" and "free societies, " two kinds of consciousness. The consciousness derived of oppression is despairing, fatalistic, and fearful of inquiry. It is mistrustful of the self and forced to trust external...

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

  3. The human beings at the helm of the new nation [USA], whatever their limitations [slave owners, anti-democracy], were truly revolutionary. The theory of liberty born in that era, the seed of the idea, was perfect. More important, the idea itself carried within it the moral...

  4. ...When we quietly go about our business as our rights are plundered, when we yield to passivity and switch on the wii and hand over our power, we are not acting like true Americans. Indeed, at those moments we are giving up our citizenship.

  5. [The ideology of beauty] has grown strong to take over the work of social coercion that myths about motherhood, domesticity, chastity, and passivity, no longer can manage. It is seeking right now to undo psychologically and covertly all the good things that feminism did for...

Related Topics