The Beauty Myth (Vintage Feminism Short Edition)

Naomi Wolf's urgent and important exposé of the cult of beauty in abridged, accessible form.

A smart, angry, insightful book, and a clarion call to freedom. Every woman should read it

Powerful... No other work has...so honestly depicted the confusion of accomplished women who feel emotionally and physically tortured by the need to look like movie stars

The most important feminist publication since The Female Eunuch

A brilliant, bracing book...The world has changed - a bit - over the past decade and a half, but not enough: this remains essential reading

This is one of the most brilliant books...One doesn't have to agree with every sentence or even every implication of the statements to realise that they revolutionise the discussion of women's magazines and other parts of the ideology about women

Naomi Wolf's uncompromising, hard-hitting investigation of the coercion of women by the Beauty Myth has the power to changes lives

Kim Chernin, author of The Obsession and The Hungry Self

Naomi Wolf is a bestselling American writer, known for her advocacy of feminism and progressive politics. She studied at Yale before becoming a Rhodes Scholar at New College, Oxford, and working in Edinburgh. She became internationally famous with the publication of her first book, The Beauty Myth, in 1991, and has gone on to write many subsequent titles, including: Fire with Fire, Promiscuities, Misconceptions, The Tree House and Vagina: A New Biography.

Vintage Feminism: classic feminist texts in short form 
 
WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR 
 
Every day, women around the world are confronted with a dilemma – how to look. In a society embroiled in a cult of female beauty and youthfulness, pressure on women to conform physically is constant and all-pervading. In this shortened edition you will find the essence of Wolf’s groundbreaking book. It is a radical, gripping and frank exposé of the tyranny of the beauty myth, its oppressive function and the destructive obsession it engenders.

Misconceptions

The bestselling author of The Beauty Myth uses the personal to explore the 'birth myth', the culture and practices of pregnancy and childbirth, with ferocity and passion.

Wolf's many bold demands... give us pause and present challenges: society should restructure itself to accommodate babies

Wolf's polemic is as clear and sure as ever

Misconceptions reminds us that pregnancy and birth are still swaddled in layers of illusion, that our society remains criminally hypocritical toward mothers... Naomi Wolf goes much deeper here than she ever has before. She strips bare the mind of the pregnant woman and new mother with dazzling courage

Naomi Wolf is a bestselling American writer, known for her advocacy of feminism and progressive politics. She became internationally famous with the publication of her first book, The Beauty Myth, in 1991, and has gone on to write a subsequent six titles including: Fire with Fire, Promiscuities, Misconceptions and The Tree House.

Every year, millions of women have their lives turned inside out by the experience of pregnancy. A contemporary woman find herself caught in an absurd paradox: while in the grip of one of the most primal, lonely, sensual and, in some ways, psychologically debilitating and physically dangerous experiences, she is overwhelmed by invasive, trivialising and infantilising cultural messages about what is happening to her - and who really owns the experience.

An Opinionated History of Female Desire

Promiscuities

In this provocative and highly personal book, bestselling author Naomi Wolf explores a subject that has long been taboo in our society: women's sexual coming-of-age.

Her book is a searing and thoroughly fascinating exploration of the complex wildlife of female sexuality and desire.

At last, a new generation of women writers is addressing the powerful issues of female sexuality. I gulped this wonderful book down in one sitting, like a novel. Brava Naomi Wolf for your courage, your intelligence, your lucid prose.

Refreshing... Highly evocative... Wolf does two important things very well: reminding readers her own age what it felt like to be a teenage girl, and providing a crash course on the wildly varying cultural meanings attached to female sexuality throughout history

Naomi Wolf [is] the best writer about women and sexuality that we have

Fascinating... Wolf celebrates the ancient concept, heavily suppressed in the 20th century, that women are the more carnal sex

Naomi Wolf was born in 1962 in San Francisco, where she grew up. She studied at Yale before becoming a Rhodes Scholar at New College, Oxford, and working in Edinburgh. She was catapulted to success in 1990 with the publication of her first book, The Beauty Myth, which became an international bestseller, published in fourteen countries. This was followed by another best-selling book, Fire with Fire, about women's relationship to power. She writes on women's issues and lectures all over the world.

By following a group of four contemporary girls - including her younger self - as they come of age in the seventies, Wolf shows how our culture tries to shape and confine women's desire. Embarking on a voyage of discovery, she illustrates how flawed and prescribed are the notions of what women want, and how these change through the ages - from Taoist techniques for giving women pleasure, to Victorian repression, and the so-called liberated nineties. 
 
Drawing on scholarly texts, secret diaries, real life and fantasy, she demonstrates that female sexuality is wilder, more demanding and more powerful than our culture dares to accept.

New Female Power and How It Will Change the Twenty-First Century

Fire with Fire

One of the defining feminist texts on the subject of recent sexual politics by the author of the international bestseller, The Beauty Myth.

Fire with Fire has energy and spirit, and generosity too. Not only can models and princesses join in, so can men... her voice comes over loud and strong and useful

Fire with Fire is an energetic, intelligent book full of good sense and straight talk

It's revolutionary for women to sing the blues, but it's even more so to sing all the songs of life. Naomi Wolf's Fire with Fire has enough energy and honesty on every page to make a unique singer out of the most reluctant, turned off-reader

Naomi Wolf is the author of The Beauty Myth, an international bestseller, and named one of the most significant books of the century by the New York Times. She lectures widely.

In her bestselling book The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf sought to change the way in which women see themselves in relation to their bodies. Now she focuses on how they see themselves in relation to power. 
 
She argues that the feminist movement has to change if it is to speak to a new generation of women, and that, even as women are gaining more ground than ever before, a wariness of feminist orthodoxies keeps them away from the only movement capable of putting political clout behind their personal success. The book represents a call to women to throw off centuries of conditioning about the relationship between power and femininity.

Naomi Wolf

A smart, angry, insightful book, and a clarion call to freedom. Every woman should read it.

The most important feminist publication since The Female Eunuch

The Beauty Myth is angry, gripping and frank… Knowledge is power, and Wolf arms us with the power to appreciate our bodies for what they are

How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women

The bestselling classic that redefined our view of the relationship between beauty and female identity . 
 
Every day, women around the world are confronted with a dilemma – how to look. In a society embroiled in a cult of female beauty and youthfulness, pressure on women to conform physically is constant and all-pervading. In this iconic, gripping and frank exposé, Naomi Wolf exposes the tyranny of the beauty myth through the ages and its oppressive function today, in the home and at work, in literature and the media, in relationships between men and women, between women and women. With pertinent and intelligent examples, she confronts the beauty industry and its advertising and uncovers the reasons why women are consumed by this destructive obsession. 
 
‘Essential reading’ Guardian 
 
‘A smart, angry, insightful book, and a clarion call to freedom. Every woman should read it’ Gloria Steinem

Naomi Wolf

Praise for The Beauty Myth

A smart, angry, insightful book, and a clarion call to freedom. Every woman should read it.

Powerful... No other work has...so honestly depicted the confusion of accomplished women who feel emotionally and physically tortured by the need to look like movie stars

The most important feminist publication since The Female Eunuch

A smart, angry, insightful book, and a clarion call to freedom. Every woman should read it.

Powerful... No other work has...so honestly depicted the confusion of accomplished women who feel emotionally and physically tortured by the need to look like movie stars

The most important feminist publication since The Female Eunuch

A smart, angry, insightful book, and a clarion call to freedom. Every woman should read it.

Powerful... No other work has...so honestly depicted the confusion of accomplished women who feel emotionally and physically tortured by the need to look like movie stars

The most important feminist publication since The Female Eunuch

Books by Naomi Wolf

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