Naomi Wolf

Naomi Wolf at the 2008 Brooklyn Book Festival.

Naomi Wolf (born November 12, 1962) is an American author, political consultant, and public intellectual. At a relatively young age, she became the literary star of what was later described as the "third-wave" of the feminist movement. She is also known for her advocacy of progressive politics.

Biography

Wolf was born in San Francisco, California in 1962. Her father, Leonard Wolf, is an author. She attended Lowell High School and debated in regional speech tournaments as a member of the Lowell Forensic Society. She attended Yale University, where she received in 1984 her Bachelor of Arts in English literature; she was a Rhodes Scholar at New College, Oxford from 1985 to 1987.

Wolf was married to the former Clinton speechwriter David Shipley, with whom she has two children, Rosa and Joseph. The two divorced in 2005.

In 2006, the Sunday Herald carried an interview in which Wolf claimed to have taken on the spirit of a 13-year-old boy and saw Jesus Christ. The paper called her comments "more than a little disturbing," and Salon magazine called the confession "truly outlandish."

Works

The Beauty Myth

In the early nineties, Wolf garnered international public notoriety as a spokesperson of third-wave feminism as a result of the tremendous success of her first book The Beauty Myth, which became an international bestseller. In the book, she argues that "beauty" as a normative value is entirely socially constructed, and that the patriarchy determines the content of that construction with the goal of reproducing its own hegemony. Wolf posits the idea of an "iron-maiden," an intrinsically unattainable standard that is then used to punish women physically and psychologically for their failure to achieve and conform to it. Wolf criticized the fashion and beauty industries as exploitative of women, but claimed the beauty myth extended into all areas of human functioning. Wolf writes that women should have "the choice to do whatever we want with our faces and bodies without being punished by an ideology that is using attitudes, economic pressure, and even legal judgments regarding women's appearance to undermine us psychologically and politically." Wolf argues that women were under assault by the "beauty myth" in five areas: work, religion, sex, violence, and hunger. Ultimately, Wolf argues for a relaxation of normative standards of beauty.

In her introduction, Wolf positioned her argument against the concerns of second-wave feminists and offered the following analysis:

The more legal and material hindrances women have broken through, the more strictly and heavily and cruelly images of female beauty have come to weigh upon us...During the past decade, women breached the power structure; meanwhile, eating disorders rose exponentially and cosmetic surgery became the fastest-growing specialty...pornography became the main media category, ahead of legitimate films and records combined, and thirty-three thousand American women told researchers that they would rather lose ten to fifteen pounds than achieve any other goal...More women have more money and power and scope and legal recognition than we have ever had before; but in terms of how we feel about ourselves physically, we may actually be worse off than our unliberated grandmothers.

Wolf's book became an overnight bestseller, garnering intensely polarized responses not only from the public and mainstream media but among feminists themselves. Second-wave feminist Germaine Greer wrote that The Beauty Myth was "the most important feminist publication since The Female Eunuch," and British novelist Fay Weldon called the book "a vivid and impassioned polemic, essential reading for the New Woman."

In contrast, Camille Paglia, whose Sexual Personae was published the same year as The Beauty Myth, derided Wolf as unable to perform "historical analysis," and called her education "completely removed from reality." Her comments touched off a series of contentious debates between Wolf and Paglia in the pages of The New Republic.

Likewise, Christina Hoff Sommers criticized Wolf for publishing the claim that 150,000 women were dying every year from anorexia. Sommers claimed that the actual number is closer to 100, a figure which others, such as Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, claimed to be much too low. In the same interview, Sommers stated that Wolf had retracted the figure.

In the mainstream press, The New York Times published a harshly critical assessment of Wolf's work: Caryn James lambasted the book as a "sloppily researched polemic as dismissible as a hackneyed adventure film...Even by the standards of pop-cultural feminist studies, "The Beauty Myth" is a mess." After rejecting her thesis, the review leveled even harsher appraisal of her methodology and statistics, writing, "Ms. Wolf doesn't begin to prove her claims because her logic is so lame, her evidence so easily knocked down...Her statistics are shamefully secondhand and outdated." In a comparatively positive review, The Washington Post called the book "persuasive" and praised its "accumulated evidence."

Promiscuities

Promiscuities reports on and analyzes the shifting patterns of contemporary adolescent sexuality. Wolf claims that literature is rife with examples of male coming-of-age stories, covered autobiographically by D. H. Lawrence, Tobias Wolff, J. D. Salinger, and Ernest Hemingway, and covered misogynistically by Henry Miller, Philip Roth, and Norman Mailer. Wolf insists, however, that female accounts of adolescent sexuality have been systematically suppressed. She adduces cross-cultural material to demonstrate that women have, across history, been celebrated as more carnal than men. Wolf argues that women must reclaim the legitimacy of their own sexuality by shattering the polarization of women between virgin and whore.

Promiscuities received, in general, negative reviews. The New York Times published a stinging review that characterized Wolf as a "frustratingly inept messenger: a sloppy thinker and incompetent writer. She tries in vain to pass off tired observations as radical apercus, subjective musings as generational truths, sappy suggestions as useful ideas." A follow-up piece, however, praised the book, writing, "Anyone--particularly anyone who, like Ms. Wolf, was born in the 1960s--will have a very hard time putting down 'Promiscuities.' Told through a series of confessions, her book is a searing and thoroughly fascinating exploration of the complex wildlife of female sexuality and desire." In contrast, The Library Journal excoriated the work, writing, "Overgeneralization abounds as she attempts to apply the microcosmic events of this mostly white, middle-class, liberal milieu to a whole generation....There is a desperate defensiveness in the tone of this book which diminishes the force of her argument."

Misconceptions

Misconceptions examines the modern problems surrounding pregnancy and childbirth. Most of the book is told through the prism of Wolf's personal experience of her first pregnancy. She describes the "vacuous impassivity" of the ultrasound technician who gives her the first glimpse of her new baby. Wolf both laments and rages against the doctor who performed her C-section, and advocates a return to more personally attached practices akin to midwifery.

Wolf's book was panned by the New York Times, responding to the book "with a feeling of exhaustion and dissatisfaction at the pie-in-the-sky laundry list of complaints."

The End of America

In The End of America Wolf takes a historical look at the rise of fascism, outlining the 10 steps necessary for a state to take control of individuals' lives:

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy.
2. Create secret prisons where torture takes place.
3. Develop a thug caste or paramilitary force not answerable to citizens.
4. Set up an internal surveillance system.
5. Harass citizens' groups.
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release.
7. Target key individuals.
8. Control the press.
9. Treat all political dissidents as traitors.
10. Suspend the rule of law.

The book explains how this pattern was followed in Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy as well as elsewhere, and compares it to the current state of affairs in American Political power since September 11, 2001.

Other writings

Wolf's other books include Fire with Fire (1993) on politics, female empowerment and women's sexual liberation.

In 2005, Wolf published The Tree House: Eccentric Wisdom from my Father on How to Live, Love, and See, which chronicled her midlife crisis attempt to reclaim her creative and poetic vision and revalue her father's love, and her father's force as an artist and a teacher. "I had turned my face away from the grace of the imagination," she wrote. While the book received positive reviews, it was criticized by Germaine Greer as Oedipal, and as an acceptance of the patriarchy that she (Wolf) had once opposed. Wolf said that she wanted to evolve from feminism and polemics, to get past the "us versus them approach."

In The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot (2007), she compares the steps taken by fascist states in their early years to actions taken by the George W. Bush administration and the U.S. Congress after the September 11, 2001 attacks. Her argument is summarized in an article published in The Guardian.

Feminist positions

Wolf considers herself a liberal feminist, a stance that has attracted criticism from radical feminists who argue that a patriarchal prejudice inheres to democratic liberalism.

Abortion

In publishing an article in The New Republic that fiercely criticized contemporary pro-choice rhetoric, Wolf staked out a qualified pro-choice position. She argued that the movement had "developed a lexicon of dehumanization" and urged feminists to accept abortion as murder and defend the procedure within the ambiguity of this moral conundrum. She continues, "Abortion should be legal; it is sometimes even necessary. Sometimes the mother must be able to decide that the fetus, in its full humanity, must die."

Wolf finishes her article by speculating that in a world of "real gender equality," passionate feminists "might well hold candlelight vigils at abortion clinics, standing shoulder to shoulder with the doctors who work there, commemorating and saying goodbye to the dead."

Wolf's position seemed to alienate all sides of the debate. Pro-life commentators seized on Wolf's claims to accuse her of "failing to carry through fully in her analysis...this simply is not, or should not be, the unqualified response of our society to the destruction of innocent life."

In pro-choice circles, Feminist Katha Pollitt denounced Wolf's article and accused her of "calling for the stigmatization or criminalization of women trying to take care of themselves."

Pornography

Departing from the anti-pornography emphasis of such second-wave feminist writers as Andrea Dworkin, Susan Brownmiller, and Catherine Mackinnon, Wolf suggested in 2003 that the ubiquity of Internet pornography tends to enervate the sexual attraction of men toward typical real women. She writes, "The onslaught of porn is responsible for deadening male libido in relation to real women, and leading men to see fewer and fewer women as “porn-worthy.” Far from having to fend off porn-crazed young men, young women are worrying that as mere flesh and blood, they can scarcely get, let alone hold, their attention." Wolf advocates abstaining from porn not on moral grounds, but because "greater supply of the stimulant equals diminished capacity."

She later followed up on this theme with the assertion that Saturday-night parties with significant alcohol consumption tended toward an increase in one-night stands, which she refers to as "hooking up".

Sexual harassment

In 2004, Wolf wrote an article for New York Magazine accusing acclaimed literary scholar Harold Bloom of sexual harassment more than two decades earlier. Explaining why she had finally gone public with the charges, Wolf wrote, "I began, nearly a year ago, to try—privately—to start a conversation with my alma mater that would reassure me that steps had been taken in the ensuing years to ensure that unwanted sexual advances of this sort weren’t still occurring. I expected Yale to be responsive. After nine months and many calls and e-mails, I was shocked to conclude that the atmosphere of collusion that had helped to keep me quiet twenty years ago was still intact—as secretive as a Masonic lodge."

Reflecting on Yale University's sexual harassment guidelines, Wolf writes, "Sexual encroachment in an educational context or a workplace is, most seriously, a corruption of meritocracy; it is in this sense parallel to bribery. I was not traumatized personally, but my educational experience was corrupted. If we rephrase sexual transgression in school and work as a civil-rights and civil-society issue, everything becomes less emotional, less personal. If we see this as a systemic-corruption issue, then when people bring allegations, the focus will be on whether the institution has been damaged in its larger mission."

Wolf's article drew intense criticism. Slate Magazine wrote, "Both her evidence and her reasoning are deeply flawed...Her gaps and imprecision give fodder to skeptics who think sexual harassment charges are often just a form of hysteria." Scholar and journalist Laura Kipnis wrote, "The power actually doesn't flow in only one direction in these encounters, nor does the vulnerability...What she's resenting, ironically enough, is the fact that she has power over him." The New York Observer wrote that she had "expertly microwaved an instant drama, attempting to be a simultaneously avenging and sympathetic angel," and drew attention to the welter of inconsistencies in her account. New York Press wrote, "Victim feminism has fallen out of fashion—and nobody warned Naomi Wolf about the tanking stocks." Jack Marshall of Ethics Scoreboard concluded, "Wolf's actions are dastardly, and violate all standards of fairness, process, and equity."

In the mainstream press, Wolf attracted similar derision. The Wall Street Journal wrote, "One is left with the unpleasant suspicion that Ms. Wolf wanted to get back into the spotlight and went rummaging in her basket of anecdotes until she found a juicy one to squeeze for publicity." The Washington Post called for an end to "exaggerated victimhood as embodied by Wolf." Author Camille Paglia described herself as "shocked" at the allegations and told the Guardian, "It really smacks of the Salem witch-hunts and all the accompanying hysteria. It really grates on me that Naomi Wolf for her entire life has been batting her eyes and bobbing her boobs in the face of men and made a profession out of courting male attention." Newspaper reports described Paglia as enraged over the accusations, blasting Wolf's decision to "wait for 20 years to bring all of this down on an elderly man who has health problems, to drag him into a 'he said/she said' scenario so late in the game...This is regressive. It's childish. Move on! Get on to menopause next!"

Women in Islamic countries

Wolf has spoken favorably about the dress required of women living in Muslim countries. She observed

The West interprets veiling as repression of women and suppression of their sexuality. But when I travelled in Muslim countries and was invited to join a discussion in women-only settings within Muslim homes, I learned that Muslim attitudes toward women's appearance and sexuality are not rooted in repression, but in a strong sense of public versus private, of what is due to God and what is due to one's husband. It is not that Islam suppresses sexuality, but that it embodies a strongly developed sense of its appropriate channelling - toward marriage, the bonds that sustain family life, and the attachment that secures a home.

Political consultant

Wolf was involved in Bill Clinton's 1996 re-election bid, brainstorming with the president's team about ways to reach "soccer moms" and other female voters.

During Al Gore's unsuccessful bid for the presidency in the 2000 election, Wolf was hired as a consultant to target female voters, reprising her role in the Clinton campaign. Wolf's ideas and participation in the Gore campaign generated considerable media coverage and criticism. According to a report by Michael Duffy in Time, Wolf was paid a monthly salary of $15,000 "in exchange for advice on everything from how to win the women’s vote to shirt-and-tie combinations." This article was the original source of the widely reported claim that Wolf was responsible for Gore's "three-buttoned, earth-toned look." The Duffy article did not mention "earth tones." The Time article and others also claimed that Wolf had developed the idea that Gore is "a beta male who needs to take on the alpha male in the Oval Office".

In an interview with Melinda Henneberger in the New York Times, Wolf denied ever advising Gore on his wardrobe. Wolf herself claimed she mentioned the term "alpha male" only once in passing and that "it was just a truism, something the pundits had been saying for months, that the vice president is in a supportive role and the President is in an initiatory role...I used those terms as shorthand in talking about the difference in their job descriptions."

Selected books

• The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women (1990) ISBN 0060512180
• Fire with Fire (1994) ISBN 0449909514
• Promiscuities: The Secret Struggle for Womanhood (or a Secret History of Female Desire) (1998) ISBN 0449907643 ISBN 0099205912 ISBN 0517454475
• Misconceptions (2001)
• The Tree House (2005)
• The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2007. ISBN 978-1933392790

External links

• [1] "Give me Liberty" YouTube interview.
• "The Next Wave:" Naomi Wolf's monthly op/ed commentary for Project Syndicate
• Naomi Wolf's blog in the Huffington Post
• American Freedom Campaign Naomi Wolf's pro-democracy website
• The Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership Women's leadership organization co-founded by Naomi Wolf
• Interview by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!, November 28, 2007 (video & audio links, and print transcript)
• 2007 Feature Interview with Naomi Wolf ('The End of America') on The Alcove with Mark Molaro
• Critical Resources: Naomi Wolf
• Naomi Wolf talks about "The End of America"