Naomi Wolf
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Naomi Wolf is a bestselling American writer. She is known for her advocacy of feminism and progressive politics and became the youngest literary star of what was later described as the third-wave of the feminist movement, which also included Susan Faludi, author of Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women.
Wolf was born in San Francisco in 1962 and studied at Yale and New College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.
She became famous because of her first book The Beauty Myth (1990), which became an international bestseller. In the book, she attacked 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."
Wolf's later books are Fire with Fire (1993) on politics and female empowerment, Promiscuities (1997) on adolescence and female sexuality, and Misconceptions (2001) on childbirth. Her latest book, "The Treehouse : Eccentric Wisdom from My Father on How to Live, Love, and See" (2005), is a complete departure from her earlier works. According to a review in "Publishers Weekly", it "focuses on the creative force that her father, teacher/poet Leonard Wolf, believes is inside all of us."
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 campain. 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 orignal 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."
Wolf was also 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. Wolf is married to a former Clinton speechwriter, David Shipley.
In 2004, Wolf became involved in scandal by accusing renowned Yale professor Harold Bloom of sexual harassment (allegedly he put his hand on her inner thigh one day) in 1983 when she was a 20-year-old undergraduate at Yale.
External links
- Critical Resources: Naomi Wolf (http://www.synaptic.bc.ca/ejournal/wolf.htm)
- "The Silent Treatment" (http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/features/n_9932/) - Wolf on the Bloom incident.ja:ナオミ・ウルフ