From thirdestatesundayreview, some truth-telling about Naomi Wolf’s “Beauty Myth,” the book from which the rest of her career has derived most of its impetus. Seems she forget to put quotation marks and a footnote under a lot of the good stuff:

“The Beauty Myth, the ‘book’ that made her a ‘name’. Parts of it are dead on arrival, others sparkle. Isn’t it past time that Naomi gave credit where it’s due? The parts that work in the book, she ‘borrowed’ from Judith N. Shklar.

All of the sparkling literary and historical critiques are ones Shklar built her lectures around. Naomi’s largely gotten away with her ‘borrowed’ passages. People whisper about it and laugh about it, but few bother to call her out on it. Shklar is deceased but, too bad for Naomi, Shklar’s The Faces Of Injustice (based on one set of lectures) came out in 1990, a year before The Beauty Myth and based on a series of lectures given in 1988. (Filled with examples Shklar’s students — including the famous political theorist who is the most vocal about Naomi’s ‘borrowing’ — can tell you were present for over a decade in the woman’s lectures.)

The Faces Of Injustice is a masterpiece, one of the finest works of political theory published in the 1990s. (Disclosure, one of us — C.I. — knew Shklar and The Common Ills is named after one of Shklar’s key phrases for what plagues societies. We both know Naomi — and work hard to avoid her.) Shklar’s book is the best sections of The Beauty Myth with none of the faltering moments where Naomi tries to think for herself.”

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