Naomi Wolf

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

Early life

Wolf was born in San Francisco, California in 1962. 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.

Works

The Beauty Myth

She became famous because of her first book The Beauty Myth (1991), which became an international bestseller. In the book, she attacked what she characterized as the exploitation of women by the fashion and beauty industries. Wolf argued that women deserve "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." The book examines five areas in which Wolf believed women were under assault by the beauty myth: work, religion, sex, violence, and hunger.

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

Recent career

Departing from the anti-pornography emphasis of such second-wave feminist writers as Andrea Dworkin, Wolf suggested in 2003 that the ubiquity of Internet pornography tends to make males less libidinous toward typical real females. 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".

Later writings

Wolf's later books are Fire with Fire (1993) on politics, female empowerment and women's sexual liberation, Promiscuities (1997) on adolescence and female sexuality, and Misconceptions (2001) on childbirth and the challenges of feminist motherhood.

In 2005, Wolf published The Tree House: Eccentric Wisdom from my Father on How to Live, Love, and See, which chronicled her mid-life 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," she wrote, "turned my face away from the grace of the imagination." While the book received positive reviews, it was criticized by Germaine Greer as Oedipal, and as an acceptance of the patriarchy that she had once opposed. Wolf said that she wanted to evolve from feminism and polemics, to get past the "us versus them approach."

Wolf, in April 2007, wrote an article published in The Guardian, a UK paper, describing the 10-step slide towards fascism that she believes the United States has taken. This article is an adaptation from her latest book The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot which was published in September 2007.

Political consultant

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

During Al Gore's unsuccessful bid for the 2000 US presidency, 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 Magazine, "Wolf [was] paid a salary of $15,000 a month…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."

Criticism

Christina Hoff Sommers criticized Naomi Wolf for publishing the now debunked figure which claimed 150,000 women were dying every year from anorexia (Sommers claims that the actual number is closer to 100). Sommers cites this as evidence of the media's "servile" attitude to prominent feminists, accepting their figures without investigation as if they were the "gospel truth."

According to Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, in Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future, Sommers` criticism was exaggerated. While providing no statistics, they asserted: "It's not even close to being as low as Sommers` estimate of than one hundred deaths per year (which shows that the critic's statistics are also fallible). In fact, there is no definitive number, because casualties of eating disorders are rarely listed as such on their death certificates. The cause of death is more accurately defined by some complication of the disease; for example, heart failure, malnutrition, or pneumonia."

Notable relatives

Her father is author Leonard Wolf. Wolf's brother, Aaron Wolf, is an expert on international-waters politics.

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

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

• 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"