None of this took away from her magnetism, though. Because what was revelatory was Wolf's person. The fact that these words about beauty were coming from someone so young, confident, and conventionally beautiful. She was like a pot-smoking older sister who had come of age in the freewheeling 1970s, whereas we had been teens in the glossy and suffocating 1980s. It might seem like a small thing, but Wolf didn't dress like a power author. Back then, she wore faded jeans and T-shirts. She had a leather jacket on in her author photo. All of this, and she had written a book that people were paying attention to. A Big Book about Big Ideas.

XREF: Touches on ethos and persona in rhetoric — how audence perception of the speaker amplifies or undercuts the message.

Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, loc. 1131