Jasper Fforde Quotes

Standards of beauty are arbitrary. Body shame exists only to the extent that our physiques don't match our own beliefs about how we should look.

What is this drive to be thinner, prettier, better dressed, other? Who exactly is this other and what does she look like beyond the jacket she's wearing or the food she's not eating? What might we be doing, thinking, feeling about if we didn't think about body image, ever?

I was essentially paid to perpetuate the myth that we are all, or should at least try to be, 17 and a size 2 forever.

This thing in society that you have to be a stick will always be in my mind, but that's just something I have to deal with.

I can't do Los Angeles. I've always been the anti-Barbie. I don't want to be in a place where almost every woman walks around with puffy lips, little noses and breasts large enough to nourish a small country.

I really don't think you need to be 40 and have three kids and have a body of an 18-year-old.

I'm so tired of people saying you have to look a certain way to be American.

I do feel pressure to look good. But that's just not going to happen, because I have a double chin, and I can't pose. It's such a struggle.

I don't agree with body shaming.

I think it frustrates me that so many people have bought into the idea of what we should look like instead of actually giving a crap about everyone around you.

I have much more to offer than my physical appearance, and a hijab protects me against 'You're too skinny,' 'You're too thick,' 'Look at her hips,' 'Look at her thigh gap.' I don't have to worry about that.

There's this idea that Hollywood sells over and over again: 'If I just looked more like this, I'd be accepted.'

In the culture we live in, there's this pervasive, shared agreement that there's a certain body type to admire, and it isn't actually based on anything real or substantive.

Deformed persons commonly take revenge on nature.

If you don't look like an airbrushed model ... you have to look past it. You look how you look. What are you going to do?

We're not freaks, Tally. We're normal. We may not be gorgeous, but at least we're not hyped-up Barbie dolls.

These are fat mummies sitting with their bags of crisps in front of the television, saying that thin models are ugly. Fashion is about dreams and illusions, and no one wants to see round women.

MYOB - mind your own body. It's important because I don't happen to have the kind of body that we usually see on television and in films. I am plus-size. I have dark skin. And I am 100 percent beautiful. But I get a lot of flak - oh, you should lose weight. And now that I have lost weight - and I lost weight for health reasons - I get, you look good but don't lose too much weight because your face is starting to sink in.

The thing is, you don't even want to be mad about someone calling you fat because who the f--- cares? Like if somebody tells me, 'Oh, you look curvier.' That should not be a diss. The fact is, we live in a time where that is a diss. It's horrible we can be like, 'You look so skinny,' and someone's like, 'Thank you!' That's horrible. That's equally as horrible to me. So the time we live in, it's upsetting.

Feeling attractive didn't come until I was 29... What is it about a woman being in her late 30s that brings out the "Oh, my gosh, are you worried?" questions? Worried? What about? Thirty-eight, 39, 40, 50! Great! Still alive!

The most I would do was use the shadow tool in Photoshop to bring out the muscular rips in my stomach, which were honestly there. Beneath the fat.

Sometimes I worry more about losing weight than gaining weight, because this is how people know and accept me. I do feel like if I wanted to get in better shape, there might be a backlash of, Why isn't she comfortable with herself anymore? So I try to figure out what my own goals are.

If you have boobs, you have to show, like, "These are boobs. This isn't cellulite."

If a woman says, I am getting these breast implants to gain self confidence, then I have to ask, What kind of a society do we live in where a woman's self-confidence depends on having a dangerous, expensive and painful operation on a perfectly healthy body?

Show me a woman content with her figure and I'll show you a seven-year-old girl. Everybody else is engaged in the war against flab.