Automatic acceptance of cultural norms
Irony defines the acceptance of social norms because human psychology makes social constructs easily accepted by certain personality types which makes culture extremely difficult to understand from the subjective point of view. When humans look at foreign cultures, they have a taste for the absurdity of it, but their own culture seems automatically correct. This is a dramatic problem for feminism, because many of the ideas which are traditionally handed down are disparaging to women.
Competition and irony
The irony of female competition is that it is to no avail, and although Naomi Woods frames that as an issue of misogyny, the concept has a broader application than that. All competition is essentially meaningless, but the idea that women should compete to be attractive is especially insidious. Yes, this stems from our animal instincts to mate, but in many cultures, it takes on unnatural aspects, like the idea that women should be conforming to hot trends and that women should be offering their selves up for judgment.
The colors of misogyny
Walking down the street, it is difficult to see where the misogyny is hiding, but the truth is that privately, many humans hold opinions about gender which would make Naomi want to rip her hair out. These various flavors of misogyny vary from subtle condescension to full blown assault and rape. This makes life extremely dramatic for women because they are never sure which kind of men are around them. Because cultures have tolerated misogyny for a long time, the ideas are commonly accepted in the guise of traditional language.
Powerlessness as attractive
When Twiggy changed the modeling industry, the commercial market changed in a way that seems exactly counter-intuitive to Woods. She feels that power is what should be attractive in a mate, but instead, the culture shifted to prize women sexually who are thin in an adolescent way which signals to the viewer that they are weak and ill-experienced. Twiggy's facial expression signals a willingness to be instructed, and this is deeply offensive to Naomi Woods because she feels that it pigeon-holes Western culture into an unhealthy obsession with weak and petite women.
The power to change
If there is a power to finally change the tacit cultural acceptance of misogyny in the public sphere, it has not yet been discovered. The problem is that people rarely change their minds once they have settled into a cultural opinion. After all, many men can hold misogynistic opinions in the name of their personal taste, she argues. Yet, change must be available because human culture is clearly dynamic; in order to bring change however, women must discover an authority and unity which is often overlooked.
