Barbara Kingsolver Quotes

I don't think I'm curvaceous. It's simply that most other actresses are really, stupidly tiny.

I'm being mocked because I don't live up to a socially determined view of what other people think a person should look like.

With women, the way they look... it's the core of their self-esteem.

It kind of cracks me up when people say I'm hot because I just think that that's a term that I don't have to deal with anymore.

Americans like fat books and thin women.

Often too many expectations are put on by society as to what we're supposed to look like and it's fed to people at an age that's too young.

The industry is quite chauvinistic generally. Expectations of women, girls, what they should look like, how they should be, what they should say, what they should wear, how their hair should be, what colour their skin should be.

It is true that women tend to be more identified with their bodies because in this crazy world, both men and women measure women's value as human beings in relationship to their physical appearance.

I think being very thin has had a lot to do with how I've been cast.

It's double talk and double standards. It's like, be honest, but don't be too honest. Look fresh-faced and young, but don't tell us how you got there. God forbid you have plastic surgery, even though we're telling you, 'Oh, you look old.' Be a career woman, but also, why aren't you having kids? Are you some kind of cold shrew?

The main criticism that I get is, 'Aren't you just conforming to a patriarchal standard of beauty?' Well, this is just the body I was given. I didn't do anything to it - it's just my body. But even if I had altered it, that would be fine, too.

It's hard to always be reduced to the way you look or your sex appeal or what that is.

There's so much judgment geared toward young girls. People just expect so much from girls. Even physically and aesthetically, people expect us to always look right, to have a certain etiquette - to talk a certain way and act a certain way - and to know certain things. It's all different expectations, but there are always expectations.

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

There are only two kinds of women, the plain and the coloured.

When I wrote 'My Humps,' I said, 'This is the stupidest thing ever,' but in a good way. I always wondered what it must be like to be a girl, always gettin' pulled on. Maybe she's the smartest genius on the planet, but she's rackin' double Ds with a 26-inch waist and a big ol' ass and no one's ever gonna see her like that because that's the way the world is today.

I was always trying to be leaner and thinner to fit the standard and the mold.

You have to enjoy being a woman. Why should being a woman be such a negative thing where you always have to improve yourself? I have never in my entire life met a man who didn't want to go to bed with me because I was too fat.

I'm a woman, and every woman wants to be skinnier - unfortunately.

Women do feel like they're in a box. Society, Hollywood, some men-they want to wrap women up in a neat little package.

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.

Looking good has never been the most important thing to me. Maybe it's because I'm more conventionally, um, acceptable, so it's not an issue for me. I don't know.

I'm insecure about everything, because... I'm never going to look in the mirror and see this blond, blue-eyed girl. That is my idea of what I'd like to look like.

When I was very young I never thought I was attractive, because I was a tomboy and I was always the biggest girl in the class.

The pressure is on the women to be particularly small, and then not only that, the whole package. It's extreme.