The Beauty Myth gave shape to all that anger. I was even angrier that I felt like doing all that, too, because nobody wants to be a wallflower.
I was furious at having to be a teenage girl-angry to see girls skipping meals and betraying friends (betraying me) in favor of boys. The Beauty Myth tied the daily problems of teenagers to the larger plight of women, affirming me in my suspicion that my everyday issues were not something I’d grow out of-they were serious. But The Beauty Myth had none of the fun and personable “ you could make a skirt out of ties!” voice that leavened Sassy’s riot grrrl politics.
My time as a fan of Sassy magazine, which was constantly critical of mainstream teenage girl culture, primed me for Wolf’s book. It marked my first experience reading something that linked my secret shames and fears to a Big Problem in the Culture. When I was 15, a few years after it was released, the book landed in my hands, probably at one of the Unitarian Universalist youth conferences I attended as a ’90s neo-hippie growing up in New England. It was a bestseller embraced by big-name feminists.
The book describes a set of punishing cultural practices that, she explains, had been “ designed” to oppress women newly liberated by second-wave feminism. Just over 30 years ago, she published the text that launched her to fame in the first place, The Beauty Myth. This has all been unsettling to watch because Wolf’s work once transformed me. The first time she went on Alex Jones’ show (but not the last) was in 2008. Just this week, she shared a 1944 photo of a Jewish couple in the Budapest ghetto wearing stars on their jackets, with the caption “Biden: ‘Show me your papers.’ ” There were many pre-COVID portents of Wolf’s conspiracy turn: In 2019, she was sharing suspicions that oddly shaped clouds were manufactured, and getting corrected on live radio for disastrously misunderstanding historical documents on which she hung the thesis of an entire book. She went on Tucker Carlson in February-not long after an actual coup attempt-to warn that the United States was “moving into a coup situation” because of COVID restrictions. The bestselling author spent the pandemic doing things like celebrating indoor restaurant meals and declaring that children are losing the reflex to smile because of masks (when asked for evidence, she stated: “The children I see around me is the citation”). First, it must be said: Naomi Wolf is a COVID truther.
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