Betty Friedan Quotes

Those that think my clothes are androgynous also still believe that women should look like Barbie dolls. That's precisely the problem, the deep-rooted assumptions about what is feminine.

My dissertation was on the idea of feminine-themed women's magazines, so like how the ideal woman is put across by women's magazines.

I'm not sure if guys are supposed to read Vanity Fair. I feel very metrosexual with it but am not sure it's in my comfort zone.

Massachusetts women as a rule adhere too strongly to old-time conventions.

Because if you say men and women are the same and if male behaviour is the norm, and women are always expected to act like men, we will never be as good at being men as men are.

Feminism is doomed to failure because it is based on an attempt to repeal and restructure human nature.

What I had noticed is that there weren't a lot of women lining up to see a comic book movie, but they were going to line up to see 'The Devil Wears Prada,' which may have been something I wanted to address.

If you're in control of everything, then no matter what it is, you can make that feminine.

Not so long ago, my feminist education taught me to ask the question, 'Is the gaze male?' The answer, apparently, is yes, which is why so many movies and television shows are about men and not women.

They always said to me that I needed to be more feminine. I think it's so wrong. Being boisterous doesn't mean you are not feminine.

I couldn't identify with the images in 'Elle' or 'Vogue' or 'Harper's Bazaar.' Nobody in the world we're walking around in actually looks like that.

The piles of makeup and the insistence on frills and ribbons and bows was not at all attuned to my feminist views.

God made a woman equal to a man, but He did not make a woman equal to a woman and a man. We usually try to do the work of a man and of a woman too; then we break down.

Can one say that there is a way of crying out, of speaking, which is properly feminine? Personally, I don't think so. In the end, I find this is another way of putting women in a kind of singularity, a ghetto, which is not what I want. I want them to be singular and universal at the same time.

I also think it's still easy for us - as women, as writers and as directors and producers - to let it fall into the same patterns. Like, "and then the woman brings in the food, because the woman's the one who makes food." It's easy for that to happen, because that's what we've always known.

Men have better self-images than women. You know what I've never seen in a men's magazine? A makeover.

Women are socialized to be nice, to be docile. I call it 'shrink to fit': Shrink yourself to fit what others expect of you.

My first performance poem was about how sometimes I was teased for being manly, or a tomboy or whatever. It was saying how just because I looked a certain way and displayed myself a certain way didn't mean that I wasn't also a feminine human...a woman if you will.

Intellect is not sexed;... strength of mind is not sexed; and ... our views about the duties of men and the duties of women, the sphere of man and the sphere of woman, are mere arbitrary opinions, differing in different ages and countries, and dependent solely on the will and judgment of erring mortals.

Over and over again, stories in women's magazines insist that women can know fulfillment only at the moment of giving birth to a child. They deny the years when she can no longer look forward to giving birth, even if she repeats the act over and over again. In the feminine mystique, there is no other way for a woman to dream of creation or of the future. There is no other way she can even dream about herself, except as her children's mother, her husband's wife.

The demand that women "return to femininity" is a demand that the cultural gears shift into reverse, that we back up to a fabled time when everyone was richer, younger, more powerful.

I was admonished ot adopt feminine clothes; I refused, and still refuse. As for other avocations of women, there are plenty of other women to perform them.

There's always [on women's magazines] that great photo of the actress or model lifting up her shirt just to show you the bone structure and the six-pack of her own. It's almost like when horses are auctioned and they show you their teeth. 'Am I good enough?'

Would it upset men if they found out we weren't different? Are we? Aren't we? Damned if I know.

She'd stopped reading the kind of women's magazine that talked about romance and knitting and started reading the kind of women's magazine that talked about orgasms, but apart from making a mental note to have one if ever the occasion presented itsel