Noma Dumezweni Quotes

It's every woman's tragedy, that, after a certain age, she looks like a female impersonator. Mind you, we've known some lovely female impersonators, in our time.

You have to be desirable. And that's why so many woman of my age or even younger are pushed to Botox and plastic surgery, all the things that people say, 'Why do women do this?' Where do you go in your 50s in your career?

It's true as a woman, particularly: the older you get, the parts get thinner on the ground and not quite as interesting, that's for sure.

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.

I find it interesting that 16-year-olds are having plastic surgery. People in their 40s used to think, 'I'm aging, I have to do something about it.' Now children are deciding they don't like the way they look.

I thought that maybe it is not so much, as he seems to think, that the world loses interest in female performers after they hit a certain age, than the performers lose interest in the world.

Old women should not seek to be perfumed.

When we get married or interviewed for a job or play professional sports or run for president of the United States, we encounter a whole set of standards and expectations. We can be shamed for an outfit that's too slutty, too dowdy, too pricey--take your pick. That's the burden women carry into the fitting room.

If you take it as a compliment that you don't look your age, then you're really shooting yourself in the foot.

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

I grew up with gossip mags commenting on how I looked.

I don't think it's easy for women to watch themselves age. And I think it's obviously doubly hard to grow older when you are a public figure and you constantly have to see your image all the time, and people are constantly pointing it out.

I was told that when you hit forty men stop looking at you. It's true, until you slip on a mini-skirt.

It's everywhere, constant criticism of women's appearance in magazines and online. It's not easy to navigate.

A woman my age is not supposed to be attractive or sexually appealing. I just get kinda tired of that.

You watch yourself age and it's hard to feel like a sex symbol.

Age is whatever you think it is. You are as old as you think you are.

I don't know any women who don't think about what they look like, and I don't know any men who don't think about what women look like.

It's not my plan or whatever in my life to be a sex symbol. It never is. You are who you are, but you can't help what you look like. And when you do a film, like for me, it's just not about that. I would prefer to downplay it. I prefer to downplay the sex appeal.

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.

What is frustrating is being told that no matter how hard I've worked, it counts less than my appearance. Although if you're not considered conventionally attractive, that also becomes an issue: you know, you're a feminist because you couldn't get a man.

I was lucky not to have been born pretty.

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

I wonder if it is harder for a woman who was beautiful to get older or a woman who was never looked at.

I am self-conscious, and I'm aware of my body. But I struggle with America's limited idea of what perfection is.