Wolf, Naomi 1962–

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Wolf, Naomi 1962–

PERSONAL: Born November 12, 1962, in San Francisco, CA; daughter of Leonard (an English professor) and Deborah (a psychotherapist) Wolf; married David Shipley (a magazine editor), 1993; children: one daughter. Education: Yale University, B.A.,1984; attended New College, Oxford, 1984–87. Religion: Jewish. Hobbies and other interests: Rollerblading.

ADDRESSES: Agent—John Brockman, John Brockman Associates Inc., 5 E. 59th St., New York, NY 10022.

AWARDS, HONORS: Academy of American Poets prize, twice.

WRITINGS:

The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used against Women, Chatto & Windus (London, England) 1990, William Morrow (New York, NY), 1991.

Fire with Fire: The New Female Power and How It Will Change the Twenty-first Century, Random House (New York, NY), 1993.

Promiscuities: The Secret Struggle for Womanhood, Random House (New York, NY), 1997.

Misconceptions: Truth, Lies, and the Unexpected on the Journey to Motherhood, Doubleday (New York, NY), 2001.

The Treehouse: Eccentric Wisdom from My Father on How to Live, Love, and See, Simon and Schuster (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor to numerous periodicals and newspapers, including George, New Republic, Ms., Glamour, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal.

SIDELIGHTS: Naomi Wolf is the author of the groundbreaking 1991 book The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used against Women and three other bestsellers, all of which deal with the role of women in western society. During the 1990s, the literary success of this poet-turned-author enabled her to emerge as a media celebrity and one of America's most influential, high-profile, and controversial feminists. Wolf, who also frequently lectures on college campuses, served for a time as a political consultant to 2000 Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore, and sometimes appears on television talk shows, has set an ambitious task for herself: to make feminism relevant to a new generation of young women. In attempting to do so, she has argued that women must reshape society by asserting themselves and making effective use of their political and economic power.

Scott Shuger, reviewing Wolf's 1997 book Promiscuities: The Secret Struggle for Womanhood for the journal Washington Monthly, described the author as a "third wave" feminist. As Shuger explained, the first wave of modern feminists, represented by women such as Betty Friedan, Germaine Greer, and Gloria Steinem, raised awareness of the problems and inequalities that women face in the world. The second wave, which included such militants as Andrea Dworkin and Susan Brownmiller, viewed men as the enemy. In Shuger's opinion, Wolf is representative of an influential segment of the third wave of feminism. "[Her] basic approach has always been more on the order of 'women can fashion solutions, and can ally with me to do so,'" he wrote. Other observers have been less accepting. For example, outspoken feminist literary critic Camille Paglia has attacked Wolf, sarcastically referring to the author as "Little Miss Pravda"—an allusion that equates her to the Moscow newspaper that once was the propaganda "voice" of the old Soviet Union's despotic government.

Wolf was the younger of two children born to Leonard Wolf, an English professor at San Francisco State University, and Deborah Wolf, a psychoanalyst. Leonard Wolf was of Eastern European and Orthodox Jewish background, and Wolf recalls in her 1997 book Promiscuities that her parents made her and her older brother Aaron attend synagogue and Hebrew school. Leonard and Deborah Wolf, whose approach to life was liberal and permissive, encouraged their children to experience the world around them. The Wolf family lived in the famous Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, one of the birthplaces of the free-love, "flower power" counterculture that came to symbolize the 1960s. This had a profound impact on young Naomi Wolf; as she recalled in Promiscuities, "the city made us feel that we were not alive if we were not being sexual."

Wolf lost her virginity at age fifteen while high on LSD and for a time in her early teens became obsessed with her body image in a negative way. She was in junior high when she developed anorexia, dropping more than twenty pounds and suffering serious health problems as a result. "Adolescent starvation was for me a prolonged reluctance to be born into woman if that meant assuming a station of beauty," Wolf wrote in her 1990 book The Beauty Myth.

Despite these problems, Wolf was a straight-A student. She did well in high school and then earned a bachelor of arts degree in English literature from Yale University in 1984. After winning a Rhodes scholarship, she spent three years (1984–87) studying in England at Oxford University. During this period, Wolf wrote poetry for the Voice Literary Supplement, Verse, and other small literary journals in England and the United States.

The author recalled in a 1991 interview with a reporter for Publishers Weekly that she also used her time at New College, Oxford, to work on a doctoral thesis about how male and female writers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries "used beauty differently—male writers often used beauty not to illuminate, but to silence women characters." Doing so gave Wolf new insights into the systemic discrimination that she and other women faced in the male-dominated world of academia. Then, one day she overheard someone comment that she had won her Rhodes scholarship because of her looks. "I had an image of the documents I had presented to the committee—my essay, a book of poems I had written, letters of recommendation—and the whole of it being swept away by that one sentence," Wolf told a Time magazine interviewer in 1991.

In the end, Wolf never finished her Oxford degree. However, as Lynn Darling noted in an article in Harper's Bazaar, Wolf did become a writer "who can hold her own in any angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin academic debate." She twice won prizes from the American Academy of Poets, and she turned her thesis into a book manuscript that was sold to publishers in both England and the United States.

Wolf's first book, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used against Women, caused a sensation when it was published in London in the fall of 1990 and in New York the following spring. The Beauty Myth was widely reviewed. It also generated a flurry of media interest and sparked spirited debates on college campuses both in England and across North America. Wolf's views have always been as topical as they are controversial. She noted in a 1991 interview with Publishers Weekly that although The Beauty Myth was widely reviewed in England, "the reaction [to it]was emotional—very few people actually grappled with the thesis."

Some of the critics who did deal with the substance of Wolf's argument noted that her thesis echoes a Marxist notion: that western industrial society, which Karl Marx maintained is inherently exploitive, requires an underpaid working class in order to thrive and prosper. In modern times, Wolf theorizes, our male-dominated society has shunted women into a "pink-collar ghetto" of low-paying, service sector jobs. The author maintains that women have not only gone along with this exploitation, they have furthered it by subscribing to "the beauty myth."

Wolf argues that women in Western society labor under an unrealistic ideal of body image and beauty, one that dictates that women must be slim, physically attractive, and subservient to men. She explores the negative effects of social pressures on women to be "beautiful," examining such topics as anorexia, cosmetic surgery, makeup, and impractical clothing. Seventy-five percent of all plastic-surgery patients are female, she points out, while more than fifty billion dollars are spent each year on cosmetics, dieting products, and exercise.

According to Wolf, appearance—or, more precisely, the unlikely standard by which female appearance is judged in western society—has, in effect, become a repressive force by which feminism itself is significantly thwarted. "I contend that this obsession with beauty in the Western world … is, in fact, the last way men can defend themselves against women claiming power,"she explained in a 1991 interview with a reporter from People magazine. Wolf regards "economic necessity" as a principal reason that such an impractical ideal—or, indeed, any ideal at all—is imposed. "Over and over in the course of women's history, the female ideals that form just happen to be ones that serve what the economy needs at the moment," she told People. "There's no male conspiracy. There's doesn't need to be."

Wolf argues that both sexes are diminished by these unreasonable expectations, for men as well as women are obliged to conform to an extraordinary and unrealistic standard of beauty. She terms the seemingly increased reinforcement of this standard an "epidemic." The Beauty Myth was Wolf's effort to raise reader awareness and effect positive social change. "What I've tried to do," she explained in the Publishers Weekly interview, "is make an argument so powerful that by the end the reader either has to find a situation we take for granted intolerable and take steps to change it—or kill the messenger."

In the three years that Wolf spent researching The Beauty Myth she gathered statistical background information and studied the works of such feminist writers as Germaine Greer, Ann Hollander, and Betty Friedan. Ironically, as Time magazine reported at the time, "Pioneer feminist Betty Friedan dismisse[d] the book as an 'obsolete rehash' and criticize[d] Wolf for dwelling on superficialities rather than coming to grips with the modern-day political challenges that confront females."

Other critics argued that the basic premise of Wolf's book is flawed because it emphasizes "the beauty myth" as the cause of women's problems. For instance, writing in the New York Review of Books, Diane Johnson commented that Wolf "ultimately attributes all social evils … to the frenzied thrashings of threatened manhood, and here it is possible that she has not cast her net wide enough." Meanwhile, National Review writer Mary G. Gotschall faulted The Beauty Myth for its pessimistic tone, but also praised Wolf for her "excellent writing and wonderful breadth of scholarship." Gotschall hailed The Beauty Myth as "a provocative new feminist tract which should take its place alongside such polemics as Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique." Margo Jefferson wrote in the New York Times Book Review that Wolf's book "shows us yet again how much we need new ways of seeing."

In addition to generating enormous media interest, The Beauty Myth won a mass readership and made bestseller lists in England, Canada, and the United States. The New York Times named it one of the seventy most influential books of the twentieth century. Wolf told People magazine that she received many letters from teenagers and young women who told her that her book was "the most true thing about their generation they've read." The author also alluded to the controversy The Beauty Mythgenerated when she noted in her People interview: "I'm trying to seize this culture by its collar and say 'Stop! Look what you're doing!' To the extent that people get angry, I know I've done a good job."

Wolf's second book, Fire with Fire: The New Female Power and How it Will Change the Twenty-First Century, was every bit as provocative as The Beauty Myth. "In part, it was a critique of second-wave feminism, accusing it of becoming too rigid in its views and calling on feminists to broaden their self definition," Judith Harlan wrote in American Women Writers: A Critical Reference Guide. "Wolf presented the idea of 'power feminism,' arguing that the time had come for women to embrace their political power…. She urged women, too, to eschew 'victim feminism' and to acknowledge, celebrate, and build their own power in business and in all of life's realms." Reviewer Karen Lehrman commented in the New Republic, "[Wolf's] central point is that the women's movement should now be seen as a big tent open to all kinds of women, that individual feminists should feel free to exercise their own 'line-item veto.' At the same time, however, she maintains that women must seize 'power' with a 'concerted, unified effort.'"

Like The Beauty Myth, Fire with Fire touched a nerve with reviewers. Many judged the book from an ideological perspective; others attacked Wolf herself for everything from her personal appearance to her relatively privileged background and her political views. Writing in Christian Century, reviewer Helen M. Sterk commented, "With the publication of Fire with Fire, Wolf takes her place among a new crop of antifeminist-feminists such as Kate Roiphe and Camille Paglia."Commonweal reviewer Clare Collins wrote, "In the end, Wolf's philosophy comes down to this: For women to enjoy true equality they must usurp the economic stranglehold of men. Certainly this is true, at least in one sense. However, I can't but think that the very audience who needs this message the most, the poor and disenfranchised, is least likely to benefit from Wolf's brand of feminism with a smiling but still elitist face."

Some reviewers and media pundits also seized upon Wolf's use of the term "victim feminism" and then chided her for having used it. However, the author explained to Publishers Weekly that in doing so she had meant to "acknowledge that women are victimized." Instead, anti-feminists have seized upon her words and used them in ways that Wolf had not foreseen. "The term has come to mean the equivalent of whining and has been used against established feminists ever since," noted Judith Harlan. Reviewing Fire with Fire for Nieman Reports, Jack Kammer stated, "[Wolf] displays courage and candor in expressing sentiments she surely knew would bring stinging reproach from her feminist allies." He added, "perhaps the most admirable part of Fire with Fire is its analysis of 'victim feminism.'… [the author's] antidote for this 'hierarchy of miserable saintliness' is 'power feminism'—robust, creative, and fun. Such freshness raises the anticipation that Wolf might provide a breakthrough in feminist thought. But that hope is dashed by her stale analysis of male power in government and media."

Wolf's third book, Promiscuities: The Secret Struggle for Womanhood, also dealt with issues relating to women and power, "this time focusing on the sexuality and coming-of-age stories of young women,"as Judith Harlan observed. "Wolf shares reminiscences of her own and those of old friends about their sexuality during the confusing teen years, and attempts to generalize from them." Entertainment Weekly reviewer Vanessa Friedman described Promiscuities as "a touchy-feely analysis of women's sexual coming of age." The reviewer continued, "The central premise … is that girls become women through their sexual experiences and that society has not grappled with that transition in any meaningful way."

As was the case with Wolf's earlier books, Promiscuities became an immediate best seller, although once again the reviews were mixed. On the one hand, critics such as Laura Shapiro of Newsweek hailed the work as "Wolf's most successful … more original than The Beauty Myth and more genuinely reflective than her political analysis in Fire with Fire … what she proves here, for the first time, is that she's a writer." Reviewer Anne Gottleib of the Nation praised Wolf's abilities as "a good storyteller, with an imaginative empathy and an eye for the sensuous, emotionally telling detail." Gottleib concluded that although "Wolf ultimately overreaches," she "is definitely onto something. Female sexuality and who controls it, is central to the problem of women's power, both subjective and social." On the other hand, New York Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani allowed that while there are "some interesting topics in this book," Wolf is "a frustratingly inept messenger: a sloppy thinker and incompetent writer." Writing in the British publication New Statesman, Eve Pollard commented, "By pinpointing the time when girls 'become women' as the moment they lose their virginity, [Wolf] enters an unreal world. That may have been how it was in Haight-Ashbury, but she doesn't pause to consider that this transition could well be different and somewhat earlier for a girl who lives in poverty, squalor, or hunger—or suffers inadequate or absentee parenting."

The subject matter of Wolf's fourth book, published in 2001, was another exploration of the themes and events of her own life. She had married David Shipley, executive editor of the New Republic, in 1993, and Misconceptions: Truth, Lies, and the Unexpected on the Journey to Motherhood is Wolf's first-person account and exploration of motherhood and the birth of her daughter. Reviewer Rebecca Abrams of New Statesman described the book as "mummy lit," typical of "an amassing body of fiction and nonfiction" that deals with motherhood. "Taken individually, these books vary greatly in style, approach, and quality; taken together, they represent something substantial and unignorable."

A Publishers Weekly reviewer wrote that Wolf "attempts to employ her fiercely confident and uncompromising, rip-the-lid-off style to tell the painful truth of motherhood in contemporary America." New York Times reviewer Claire Dederer wrote, "Wolf's goal is not to write a small, personal book. It is, as with her previous writing, to link her experience to larger cultural and social forces. Her books can be boiled down to a simple calculus of woman acted upon by society." Dederer concluded, "In the context of memoir, Wolf's personal writing no longer seems self-indulgent. It seems vital, and in a sense radical, in the tradition of 1970s feminists who sought to speak to every aspect of women's lives. In fact, her autobiographical testimony has a stringently moral quality, an intelligence not found in her social critique." Reviewer Bonnie Schiedel of Chatelaine magazine had a similar assessment. "Misconceptions is eye-opening, irritating, and tender, but it will make you see motherhood in a new light," she wrote.

As has been the case with all of Wolf's books, many reviews were colored by the politics of the debate over feminism and reproductive rights. However, with publication of Misconceptions there came something of a shift in Wolf's public image; suddenly, liberal critics, who had usually been supportive of her ideas, began to join the attacks on her. "Certainly the most offensive and dangerous part of the book is Wolf's decision to cave in completely on reproductive rights," Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels stated in an article in the Nation.

If Wolf has been bothered by any of the criticisms that have been thrown her way, she has not let it show. In fact, the evidence is that Wolf relishes the intellectual challenge of defending herself and her writings. In a question-and-answer session that appeared in the British newspaper the Guardian, one reader asked Wolf how she copes with "the constant derision of your ideas." Her response was succinct: "To me, it is much more important to do what we all can to work for social justice than it is to get sidetracked by ridicule, which is the anti-feminists' oldest and most boring weapon." In an interview with a reporter from Newsweek, Wolf touched on the same theme when she explained, "Women are the majority now, but we're not going to get power by being nice girls."

Yet Wolf's next book, The Treehouse: Eccentric Wisdom from My Father on How to Live, Love, and See, is unconcerned with power or politics. A marked departure from her previous work, the book is a noncontroversial exploration of her father's wisdom as it pertains to fostering creativity. Library Journal reviewer Kathryn R. Bartelt called the book "lyrical, insightful, and poignant."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

American Women Writers: A Critical Reference Guide, Volume 4, 2nd edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2000.

Feminist Writers, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1996.

Newsmakers Gale (Detroit, MI), 1994.

Wolf, Naomi, Promiscuities: The Secret Struggle for Womanhood, Random House (New York, NY), 1997.

PERIODICALS

Book, November-December, 2001, Stephanie Foote, review of Misconceptions: Truth, Lies, and the Unexpected on the Journey to Motherhood, p. 66.

Booklist, May 1, 1997, Sonna Seaman, review of Promiscuities: The Secret Struggle for Womanhood, p. 1459-60; September 1, 2001, Mary Frances Wilkens, review of Misconceptions, p. 29; March 1, 2005, Mary Frances Wilkens, review of The Tree-house: Eccentric Wisdom from My Father on How to Live, Love, and See, p. 1101.

Chatelaine, November, 2001, Bonnie Schiedel, "Three Books People Are Talking About," p. 26.

Choice, May 1994, C. Adamsky, review of Fire with Fire: The New Female Power and How it Will Change the Twenty-First Century, p. 1511.

Christian Century, July 13, 1994, Helen Sterk, review of Fire with Fire, pp. 694-695.

Christian Science Monitor, September 27, 2001, Marilyn Gardner, "The Baby Myth: Naomi Wolf Critiques a Culture Determined to Make Pregnancy Difficult," p. 19.

Commonweal, February 25, 1994, Clare Collins, review of Fire with Fire, pp. 22-23.

Entertainment Weekly, July 20, 1997, Vanessa V. Friedman, review of Promiscuities, pp. 65-66.

Guardian, September 11, 2001, "Naomi Wolf Answers Your Questions."

Harper's Bazaar, November, 1993, article by Lynn Darling; May, 1997, Cynthia Kling, "Remembrance of Past Sex," pp. 114-115.

Human Life Review, summer, 1996, "A Conversation with Naomi Wolf," pp. 65-86.

Library Journal, March 1, 1994, Miriam Kahn, review of audio version of Fire with Fire, p. 138; June 15, 1997, Rose M. Cichy, review of Promiscuities, p. 88; September 1, 2001, Barbara M. Bibel, review of Misconceptions, p. 218; April 1, 2005, Kathryn R. Bartelt, review of The Treehouse, p. 95.

Nation, January 31, 1994, Kio Stark, review of Fire with Fire, pp. 137-141; June 9, 1997, Annie Gottleib, review of Promiscuities, pp. 25-27; November 26, 2001, Susan J. Douglas and Meredith Michaels, "The Belly Politics," p. 26.

National Review, July 8, 1991, pp. 42-44; October 23, 1995, J. O'Sullivan, "Regrets Only," p. 6; June 2, 1997, Ellen Wilson Fielding, review of Promiscuities, pp. 54-56.

New Republic, March 14, 1994, Karen Lehrman, review of Fire with Fire, pp. 40-45; October 16, 1995, Naomi Wolf, "Our Bodies, our Souls: Rethinking Pro-Choice Rhetoric," p. 26.

New Statesman, May 9, 1997, Eve Pollard, review of Promiscuities, p. 45; September 17, 2001, Rebecca Abrams, "More Mummy Lit," p. 55.

Newsweek, November 15, 1993; June 16, 1997, Laura Shapiro, review of Promiscuities, p. 55.

New York Review of Books, January 16, 1992, p. 13.

New York Times, June 10, 1997, Michiko Kakutani, review of Promiscuities, p. C13.

New York Times Book Review, May 19, 1991, p. 11; June 8, 1997, Courtney Weaver, review of Promiscuities; October 7, 2001, Claire Dederer, review of Misconceptions, p. 30.

Nieman Reports, spring, 1994, Jack Kammer, review of Fire with Fire, pp. 107-108.

off our backs, May, 1994, Ann Menasche, review of Fire With Fire, p. 9; December 1994, Karla Mantilla, Fire With Fire, pp. 1-5.

People, June 24, 1991, pp. 117-21.

Publishers Weekly, February 15, 1991, Maria Simon, "Cry Wolf: Morrow Explores the Burdens of Beauty," p. 64; March 1, 1991, p. 68; May 5, 1997, review of Promiscuities, p. 186; June 30, 1997, W. Smith, "Naomi Wolf: Confessions of a Feminist," pp. 56-57; August 20, 2001, review of Misconceptions, p. 73; February 28, 2005, review of The Treehouse, p. 48.

Time, March 4, 1991, Emily Mitchell, "The Bad Side of Looking Good," p. 68.

Times (London, England), June 30, 1997, Ginia Bel-lafante, review of Promiscuities, p. 71; September 10, 2001, Erica Wagner, "Welcome to Motherhood, Parents," p. S8.

US Weekly, September 17, 2001, Janet Steen, review of Misconceptions, p. 90.

Wall Street Journal, June 6, 1997, Elizabeth Powers, review of Promiscuities, p. 17.

Washington Monthly, June, 1997, Scott Shuger, review of Promiscuities, pp. 49-51.

Washington Post, November 5, 1999, Ann Gerhart, "Who's Afraid of Naomi Wolf? The List Is Growing since the Promiscuities Author Turned Gore Advisor," p. C01.

Women's Review of Books, February 1994, Lesley Hazelton, review of Fire with Fire, pp. 1-3; July 1997, Julie Phillips, review of Promiscuities, pp. 34-35.