Naomi Wolf
Naomi Wolf is a political activist and social critic whose most recent book is Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries.
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2010-08-30
| Just as single mothers were irrationally castigated a generation ago, so today an equally irrational hagiography has risen around them. Indeed, in US pop culture, single mothers are the new maternal ideal – women whose maternal drive is so selfless and intense that they choose to raise children even under the burden of their solitary status.... read |
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2010-07-30
| There has always been tension in the US between church-state separation and regular upsurges of religious faith that seek an outlet in the political process – or even seek to dominate it. Nowhere is this tension more visible today than in the struggle for the political soul of the Tea Party.... read |
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2010-06-30
| Fashion has been transformed by the recent emergence of retail chains that hire good designers to make throwaway clothing and accessories that are right on trend. But what has been liberating for Western women is a system built literally on the backs of women in the developing world.... read |
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2010-05-24
| This year’s Cannes Film Festival has been marked by a profound contrast between the glitter, excess, and posturing outside the Palais and the films debuting onscreen. This year’s lineup is filled with tales of ordinary people struggling with the fallout of the global issues that increasingly unite us – or confronting painful political conflicts that official histories had laid to rest. ... read |
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2010-04-30
| Ever since Huck Finn took his friends down the Mississippi River on a raft, American men have created and consumed fantasies of setting out with their males friends for parts unknown, or of traveling in an all-male group to have adventures closer to home. The male-escape scenario is hard to spot emerging from any other country, but the US version seems to have universal appeal.... read |
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2010-03-30
| The past decade has proven again and again that empowering women worldwide holds the key to solving massive, seemingly intractable issues that have otherwise stymied policymakers. The tensions and conflicts around immigration in Europe could be yet another issue for which the empowerment of women holds a hidden solution.... read |
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2010-02-26
| Ever since the first Tea Party convention was held last month in Nashville, Tennessee, with Sarah Palin as one of the keynote speakers, the political and media establishments have reacted with a combination of apprehension and disdain. But those who deride and dismiss this movement do so at their own peril. ... read |
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2010-01-29
| James Cameron’s film Avatar is notable for two revealing themes: the raw, guilty template of the American unconscious in the context of the “war on terror” and late-stage corporate imperialism, and the film's very critical portrayal of America – for the first time ever in a Hollywood blockbuster – from the point of view of the rest of the world.... read |
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2009-12-30
| As the world struggles to emerge from the economic near-collapse of last fall, there is one sub-group that has slid below the waterline in record numbers: formerly middle-class women. The reason is largely cultural, as learned social roles encourage financial illiteracy.... read |
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The Achievement Myth
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Naomi Wolf 
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It is not necessarily a victory for women that, 40 years after the rebirth of the Western feminism, professional women are just as exhausted as professional men traditionally have been. Women have externalized the feminist ideal as a set of accomplishments and rigors, rather than embracing it as an expansion of freedom, which can sometimes include freedom from eternal aspiration.... read
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2010-01-29
| James Cameron’s film Avatar is notable for two revealing themes: the raw, guilty template of the American unconscious in the context of the “war on terror” and late-stage corporate imperialism, and the film's very critical portrayal of America – for the first time ever in a Hollywood blockbuster – from the point of view of the rest of the world.... read |
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2008-06-19
| Sex crime has a telltale signature, even when those directing the outrages are some of the most powerful men and women in the United States. How extraordinary, then, to learn that one of the perpetrators of these crimes, Condoleezza Rice, has just led the debate in a special session of the United Nations Security Council on the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war.... read |
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2008-10-30
| We are entering a golden era of citizen speculation, documentation, and inference that takes shape, usually on the Internet, and spreads virally around the globe, pulling conspiracy theories from the margins of discourse, where they usually remained in the past, into the center. While these theories are often wildly irrational, the cause of their appeal is not.... read |
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2010-06-30
| Fashion has been transformed by the recent emergence of retail chains that hire good designers to make throwaway clothing and accessories that are right on trend. But what has been liberating for Western women is a system built literally on the backs of women in the developing world.... read |
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2008-07-31
| Although the truth is out about the Bush administration's criminality and reckless disregard for the US Constitution, the American public is still napping, worrying about its weight, and hanging out at the mall. Maybe Americans will wake up if faced with targeted government-led sanctions against the US, and an internationally coordinated strategy for prosecuting its war criminals.... read |
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2009-03-03
| In the midst of the worst economic crisis since the 1930’s, President Barack Obama's approval ratings remain remarkably high, with respondents consistently saying that he “cares about people like me.” A large share of the credit for this should go to his wife.... read |
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2008-09-28
| The selection of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate hit the United States like an electric storm. But to understand the basis of her popular appeal is also to understand why support for her has already begun to collapse.... read |
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2008-12-31
| As the US prepares to celebrate the inauguration of its first African-American president, it showcases again one of the best aspects of its national identity. Indeed, Barack Obama’s example – and that of his newly formed cabinet, which includes many accomplished leaders from ethnic or racial “out-groups” – holds useful lessons for other nations, particularly in Western Europe.... read |
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2008-11-28
| There are plenty of plausible explanations for why Barack Obama decided to tap his former adversary, Hillary Clinton, to serve as the face and voice of his foreign policy, as his emissary to the world? But explanations that focus on the need to keep the Clintons and their supporters under control or to secure the support of women probably miss the point. ... read |
2010-08-30
