Estelle R. Ramey Quotes

Our culture has created two almost irreconcilable descriptions of a 'good woman.' The first is the individual achiever; the second, the self-sacrificing domestic goddess.

Often, women as little girls are sent off on a track for them to live a perfect life and be a perfect woman. Not for boys, who can be themselves with their mood and their temper.

A woman can never be too rich or too thin, but until very, very recently, she could be too powerful, for which - if she wasn't smart enough to camouflage herself - she generally paid the price.

I think women have long been defined by their roles as procreators and wives, and we're expected to serve, take care of, say 'Yes,' and not ruffle any feathers. Women, in particular, are sometimes not allowed to consider who they are outside of the roles that they play.

I'm too tall to be a girl. I'm between a chick and a broad.

Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster.

There's this whole feeling that women should be small and quiet and polite, and I don't think that's really gotten us anywhere.

People try to make women a very specific thing so that we like them.

You don't have to choose between June Cleaver or Barbara Walters. There are miles of space between them.

There's a great deal of tension between so many kind of distinctive and restrictive female archetypes and images in the world. When you play with the archetypes, you get free.

I was very depressed at a young age and felt like I didn't have agency towards that. Being 'female' meant I couldn't be that - I couldn't be angry, loud, sullen. Being sad meant I was weak.

Your women of fashion ceases to be a woman. She is neither mother, nor wife, nor lover. She is, medically speaking, sex on the brain.

The Victorian woman became her ovaries, as today's woman has become her "beauty.

Leaning her silly, beautiful, drunken head on my shoulder, she said, "Oh, Esther, I don't want to be a feminist. I don't enjoy it. It's no fun." "I know," I said. "I don't either." People think you decide to be a "radical," for God's sake, like deciding to be a librarian or a ship's chandler. You "make up your mind," you "commit yourself" (sounds like a mental hospital, doesn't it?). I said Don't worry, we could be buried together and have engraved on our tombstone the awful truth, which some day somebody will understand: WE WUZ PUSHED.

I feel like I don't see myself as all that different from other humans as a woman, but I'm surprised by how frequently I'm asked to see myself differently. So that's one kind of terror to have to face. Am I a unicorn? What's sticking out of my head that I'm not seeing? I'm simply female, and that puts me alongside all of my human counterparts.

Fear and niceness, the handmaids of all women, or more truly, woman its pretty self.

Did ever woman, since the creation of the world, interrupt a man with such a silly question?

She did what girls generally do when they don't feel the part: she dressed it instead.

Many young women are less whole and androgynous than they were at age ten. They are more appearance-conscious and sex-conscious. They are quieter, more fearful of holding strong opinions, more careful what they say and less honest. They are more likely to second-guess themselves and to be self-critical. They are bigger worriers and more effective people pleasers. They are less likely to play sports, love math and science and plan on being president. They hide their intelligence. Many must fight for years to regain all the territory they lost.

We felt the imprisonment of being a girl, the way it made your mind active and dreamy, and how you ended up knowing which colors went together. We knew that the girls were our twins, that we all existed in space like animals with identical skins, and that they knew everything about us though we couldn’t fathom them at all. We knew, finally, that the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love and even death, and that our job was merely to create the noise that seemed to fascinate them.

I may be strong-minded, but no one can say I'm out of my sphere now, for woman's special mission is supposed to be drying tears and bearing burdens

A woman who cannot make her mistakes charming, is only a female.

The sad thing about our society is that women are put in one of two categories. You're either in the beautiful category and you're seen as sexy and beautiful, or some version of that, or you're put into another category... The latter category affords women the opportunity to be smart, funny, independent, mean, strong, intelligent and opinionated. We take them seriously as politicians, if they fit into that latter category. We respect their opinions more and give them higher expectations. That latter category is what allows female actors to be characters.

Monroe, the consummate sexual doll, is empowered to act but afraid to act, perhaps because no amount of acting, however inspired,can convince the actor herself that her ideal female life is not a dreadful form of dying.

People can't bear the idea that I could be sexual and provocative, and still be a nice person with a nice family and a nice husband, and have a career that could work, and be paid a certain amount of money.