Amanda Foreman Quotes

Foot-binding is said to have been inspired by a tenth-century court dancer named Yao Niang who bound her feet into the shape of a new moon. She entranced Emperor Li Yu by dancing on her toes inside a six-foot golden lotus festooned with ribbons and precious stones.

It used to happen in villages and towns in China that they would have - I guess you'd call them beauty contests - where all of the women of a particular village or town would be seated behind these screens or curtains with only their feet showing.

And one of the interesting things about bound feet is that they never age.

Practices such as arranged marriages and restrictions on girls attending school have deep roots, and changing them is a gradual process. Sometimes these problems seem very far away from us here in the United States. But let's remember that even into the 20th century, an American woman could not own property or vote in national elections.

I was a girl in a land where rifles are fired in celebration of a son, while daughters are hidden away behind a curtain, their role in life simply to prepare food and give birth to children.

I'm a polygamist. I can afford to have as many wives as I can afford to have. All Africans believe in it. My dad has four wives.

In France, a woman may forget that she is neither young nor handsome; for the absence of these claims to attention does not expose her to be neglected by the male sex.

In India, I'm always 'Aruna Roy's husband.'

It would be impossible to be a woman in Western culture and not have your own issues about your image and what you look like.

Western women have been controlled by ideals and stereotypes as much as by material constraints.

I grew up in a culture in which it was a sin for a woman to speak out.

For the lower classes it is economic. They need to work and appear proper, so they veil. By contrast, wealthier and more educated families frequently have histories in which mothers and aunts took off the veil more than 80 years ago.

In countries like ours, women enter politics in mourning clothes.

Saudi women used to drive camels and journey at night among men. What is the difference between a camel and a car?

Polygamy is allowed among the Chinese, and a man is pleased with his favorite wife and with his Maker in proportion to the number of sons she bears him; no account is made of daughters.

Anyone who's had a finger pointed at them and been told they're pretty or attractive, there's a power that comes with that. But beauty for a woman becomes cumbersome because it's always being equated with youth.

We didn't do cotillions or anything. My family made fun of the pageants.

The more I think on the present condition of woman, the more am I oppressed with the reality of their degradation.

Being born a girl in India, it matters a lot what family you are born into.

Male buerkitshi are certainly more common than females today, although eagle hunting has always been open to interested girls. Archaeology suggests that eagle huntresses were probably more common in ancient times.

[Partly as a consequence of male authority] prestige value always attaches to the activities of men.

Not woman, but the condition of woman, has always been a doorway of evil.

It would have saved trouble had I remained Perkins from the first, this changing of women's names is a nuisance we are now happily outgrowing.

Attempts to limit female mobility by hampering locomotion are ancient and almost universal. The foot-binding of upper-class Chinese girls and the Nigerian custom of loading women's legs with pounds of heavy brass wire are extreme examples, but all over the world similar stratagems have been employed to make sure that once you have caught a woman she cannot run away, and even if she stays around she cannot keep up with you. ... Literally as well as figuratively modern women's shoes are what keeps Samantha from running as fast as Sammy.

That beautiful mild woman for whose sake There's many a one shall find out all heartache On finding that her voice is sweet and low Replied, 'To be born a woman is to know- Although they do not talk of it at school - That we must labor to be beautiful.