The Next Wave

Naomi Wolf

Whatever happened to feminism? Does Islam really turn women into “happy slaves”? Is America’s traditional commitment to democracy and equality in terminal decline? Has the West illegitimately monopolized the idea of human rights? Are there specific female values?

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The Single Mother Makeover

Naomi Wolf Series: The Next Wave

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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God Crashes the Tea Party

Naomi Wolf Series: The Next Wave

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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The High Cost of Cheap Fashion

Naomi Wolf Series: The Next Wave

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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Moving Pictures

Naomi Wolf Series: The Next Wave

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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The Great Escapism

Naomi Wolf Series: The Next Wave

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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Women for Integration

Naomi Wolf Series: The Next Wave

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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Tea Time in America

Naomi Wolf Series: The Next Wave

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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Avatar and Empire

Naomi Wolf Series: The Next Wave

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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How Women Go Bankrupt

Naomi Wolf Series: The Next Wave

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	Naomi Wolf
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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