A sweltering Monday night and it’s standing room only at the Women and Children First bookstore on North Clark. Several hundred Naomi Wolf fans–mostly women, mostly (like Wolfe) in their twenties–are wedged in shoulder to shoulder, sweating good-naturedly while they wait to hear from the beauty who has taken on the beauty industry.
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But this is her audience. She lifts the microphone off its stand and takes them in hand: “We are in the midst of a backlash which is using a newly rigid and unnatural beauty ideology as a politcal weapon against women’s advancement,” she says. “The images of beauty we are allowed to see are dictated by the $33 billion diet industry, the $20 billion cosmetics industry and the cosmetic surgery industry. What does the ideal woman look like?” (Wolf tosses the question to the audience and the answers she’s looking for come bouncing back to her: Large breasts. Small waist. Puffy lips.) “Okay,” Wolf says, “She’s young, thin, tall, blond, hairless. This is like a personal issue with me. My ancestors were from Eastern Europe, and the winters were cold.”
There is no way to look at her strategically lit publicity photo and not notice that she has high cheekbones, a piquant upper lip, pale eyes under perfectly defined brows. And there is no way to look at her here, in the sweltering bookstore, without noticing a generous edge of lacy underware above the low neckline of her blouse, and a nicely rounded ass in tight, black stirrup pants. When two buttons of the blouse somehow open, there’s no way not to notice the camisole itself, with the suggestion of a black bra underneath.
It’s a congenial atmosphere and she’s working the audience like a pro. They’re feeding her lines, laughing at her jokes, applauding, volunteering their own stories. One woman is six-foot-four and proud of it; another has a sister who took 120 laxatives a day and nearly died. A third introduces herself: “I am Pauline Bart from the University of Illinois. I was looking forward to using your book this spring in a gender and society class. But I told the truth in my classes and now I am no longer allowed to teach. I want this audience to know this. Even if you’re a full professor with tenure, gender is hierarchy. Any male undergraduate can get you; the administration can use his complaint to show that you’re male bashing.”
