A Womans Place by Naomi Wolf :: Feminism

The True Woman "A Woman’s Place", the name of the commencement speech given by Naomi Wolf at the Scripps College graduation in 1992; contrasts the independent and the dependent woman. In today’s society, there are two different types of women: the woman who has a good head on her shoulders and knows where she is going in the world, and the woman who seeks dependence within the masculine world. Just as they were thirty years ago, women are still not considered to be equal to men. They are more or less looked at as being second to men. Naomi Wolf is a Jewish feminist writer who supports the independent woman. She was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University and graduated from Yale in 1984. Since then, Wolf has written two books that she is very well known for. She wrote her first book, titled The Beauty Myth, when she was twenty-nine years old. This book talks about women and how they feel beauty is one of the most important factors that will get you anything or anywhere. Her second book Fire With Fire was written in 1993. This book is about women taking control and not being victimized. Wolf is said to be a headstrong feminist that really believes in women’s power. In her commencement speech she mentions four factors of knowledge that she believes are mandatory for women to remedy. Her idea of a true or good woman is a strong woman who knows what she wants from life, is out to succeed, and will survive. An untrue or bad woman is a lady that is weak, that has a tendency to get run over, and has no real ambition for what she wants to do with her life. Wolf says that in order to become a headstrong, successful woman, one needs to redefine becoming a woman. Women have many different ways to clarify becoming women. According to Wolf, men have it a lot easier; however, most people in society would not agree with this. Boys have just as hard of a time becoming a man as a girl does becoming a woman. One might believe that Wolf is trying to say a women needs to redefine herself in order to have a place to start, so she can figure out what she wants to be and where she wants to go.