edition, and the cover shows a black and white photo of a naked woman with an entirely bandaged face sitting pensively under an end table that precisely frames her body. The other day, after Wolf was kicked off Twitter for promulgating anti-vaccine claptrap, I took my copy of The Beauty Myth off the bookshelf to remind myself why she mattered to us back in the day. The metaphor powerfully conveys how consumer society’s pretty pictures of pretty women mask the starvation and torture we endure in pursuit of beauty. Each chapter title, for example, is one word: “Work,” “Sex,” “Hunger.” A memorable image describes how the beauty myth functions: the iron maiden, a medieval torture instrument decorated on the outside with a smiling and attractive image of a young girl. And like many books in the tradition of feminist screeds, The Beauty Myth ’s power derives in part from prose that signifies both simplicity and profundity. She could not be accused of sour grapes or resentment a stereotypically “ugly” or even average-looking feminist would not have been able to attack the beauty industry with equal credibility. Its author was pretty and presentable (“tourable,” as the publishing industry used to say before #MeToo). Here was a feminist disquisition of old-school proportions: a big fat analysis of how profit and patriarchy conspire to make women feel bad about ourselves, joined with a call to action. Published in 1990, Naomi Wolf’s breakout hit, The Beauty Myth, changed all that. The days of the feminist bestseller were past, it appeared-and with them, the power of a transformative movement. Feminist ideas no longer seemed to inspire people to picket their workplaces or leave their husbands. The women’s movement was still intellectually fruitful-scholars and activists debated sexuality, class, and race in anthologies published by university presses-but it had lost its visceral urgency. Under Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and Phyllis Schlafly, feminism was in retreat. But the 1980s were a more pessimistic, less ambitious time. The weighty feminist classics that had shaken the world from the midcentury through the 1970s-Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch, Susan Brownmiller’s Against Our Will-had been read by millions. (Was this the tweet that pushed Twitter over the edge?) I graduated from college in 1991, Naomi Wolf was a feminist icon, and the only person of or close to my generation who merited the designation. Thanks, for finally suspending Naomi Wolf for spreading harmful and floridly delusional anti-vax disinformation. KgCrE1b2o3Īnd finally, when she talked sh-t in absolutely every sense When a cuddly toy bear appeared to give her the fearīefore she left, Naomi Wolf left us with one of the funniest tweets in the history of this garbage site. When she suggested vaccines let you time travelĪmazing Naomi Wolf is the first recorded person to be banned from Twitter for being too stupid after giving us such gems as “the vaccines let you time travel”, crying that a teddy bear might get a jab, and worrying there might be vaccinated people’s urine in the sewage she drinks /paOybVDlBt When she said this about 1970s Northern Irelandīefore she was banned, Naomi Wolf gave us the funniest tweet on Northern Ireland’s history: /U圆c7UMi5n When she was tricked into sharing an image of ‘Dr John Sims’ which was actually a picture of porn star making a false quote She posted a wide range of unfounded myths including one tweet that suggested vaccines were a “software platform that can receive uploads”. Author and anti-vaxxer Naomi Wolf has been suspended by Twitter after she used the platform to spread misinformation about vaccines and the coronavirus.
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