Meghan O'Rourke Quotes

I just think we tear down women in this country for all these superficial reasons, and women are so great and strong.

I'm glad you're doing this story on us and not on the WNBA. We're so much prettier than all the other women in sports.

We have to nurture our young women and understand the beauty and the strength of being a woman. It's kind of a catch-22: Strength in women isn't appreciated, and vulnerability in women isn't appreciated. It's like, 'What the hell do you do?' What you do is you don't allow anyone to dictate who you are.

We know in our society, women are valued for their sexual desirability and not necessarily for what they have to say.

When people say, 'You run like a girl; you play like a girl,' it's not what it used to be. That shouldn't be negative. You should be proud to play like a girl.

I think that there's a tendency for actors who play strong women to have them take on all the worst characteristics of men, to become cold and detached and hardened.

Two phrases I hate in reference to female characters are 'strong' and 'feisty.' They really annoy me. It's the most condescending thing. You say that about a three-year-old. It infantilises women.

We don't have enough young, female antiheroes. We don't accept women as antiheroes the way we do the men.

There is this idea that you have to play heroines or women who succeed.

Women's strong qualities have become despised because of their weakness. The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman.

Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power.

Women get the attention when we get into the men's arena, and that's sad.

I was called a misogynist because I was reducing women to mothers. 'Reducing women to mothers' - now there is possibly the most anti-women statement I've heard.

Being the ideal of a strong woman means utilizing all the things that God gives you. People are always saying to me, 'You're a strong female, so why are you wearing a bikini on the cover of that magazine?' Being a strong woman is misconstrued to be something evil and ugly.

I like being a woman, even in a man's world. After all, men can't wear dresses, but we can wear the pants.

I think sometimes women who are supposed to be strong are also written as mean and vindictive.

I don't see why women have to get naked to sell an album. It's crazy.

I think we still believe that ambition is for boys.

Women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions which men think it manly to pay to the sex, when, in fact, men are insultingly supporting their own superiority.

We need to understand that femininity is not weakness. And our society, for some reason, equates the two.

The only moment I become aware of being the only woman in a meeting is when actresses are being discussed. If someone's critical of how a woman looks, they turn to me and apologize.

Every woman is just a different kind of problem.

If there's ever a woman who's smart, funny, or witty, people are afraid of that, so they don't write that. They only write parts for women where they let everything be steamrolled over them, where they let people wipe their feet all over them.

I was groomed as a so-called sex symbol, a rival to Marilyn Monroe, and from then on, whenever my picture appeared in paper, it was 'sex kitten,' 'sex symbol,' 'sex goddess,' 'sex pot.' I've accepted it, and I'm flattered, but in some ways, it's been a hindrance to me because I haven't been able to be taken seriously as an actress.

I think it is childish for men to joke about women's clothes, to make fun of our hats, to complain over the cost of a good fur coat.