Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Quotes

Some people look gender non-conforming because they want to look that way - they don't want to conform to society's expectations.

I think the world is kind of catching on that gender roles aren't so necessary and becoming a lot less defined and starting to become a lot more about the individual and character of that person.

I never saw a ­distinction between a man and a woman. My ­grandparents and my mother were great examples of men and women, and they taught me ­equality. So I would fight with boys and wear my cousin's clothes. I would do whatever I wanted, and that's where I still stand today.

I'm not 'one of the guys.' I don't want to pretend to be one on stage. I'm not going to dress like a guy or carry myself like one.

I feel nowadays that both women and men are embracing their individuality rather than being defined by gender roles.

I feel that women and men should free themselves up. It took me a while to get over my dysphoria about shopping in the men's section, trying on men's clothes, but when I was thinking about my life and the kind of woman I wanted to be, it was never just this by-the-book feminine thing.

I always say I never felt 'latched' to a gender. I just kind of always felt like myself, and I never felt like I had to do certain things or be a certain way to fit into a certain mold.

I think of my gender as a part of my complex humanity.

I definitely feel that society sets expectations for transgender people to fit in and makes us feel as if we have to dress a certain way so that we blend in with everyone else. But I believe all transgender individuals should be able to wear whatever they want and not worry about fitting in.

When gender comes down upon us, male or female, it comes as a restriction.

No one ever told me when I was growing up that make-up and skirts were just for girls. If you're confident and you own it, [the other kids] are fine with it...I've always supported the lifestyle that I will do what I please and deal with it.

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.

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.

I love that contradiction of being feminine but playing in the boys' treehouse. My whole life's been like that.

The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are. Imagine how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves, if we didn't have the weight of gender expectations.

I wanted to show a normal young girl whose only difference was that she behaved in the way a boy might, without any sense of guilt on a moral or sexual level.

I was a tomboy as a kid - I was skinny and had cropped hair and was often mistaken for a boy - and up until I was about six, I had my own very fluid ideas of gender in that I believed that, somehow, an individual could choose whether or not s/he wanted to be a boy or a girl.

When I was born, there was a very isolated idea of what it meant to be a man or a woman, and you belonged to one gender or the other.

I don't believe in categorising a gender, as it makes for discord. People always say, 'That's what men are like' or, 'That's what women do'; I don't really feel that at all. I think that's because I have two fathers, three brothers, a husband and two sons. I'm surrounded by maleness, and I couldn't possibly summarise them into a type.

I see myself as quite feminine. But many people seem to think differently about that; sometimes people mistake me for a man. In Paris I often hear 'bonjour monsieur'.

Im not your biggest girly girl.

I don't think gender is aesthetically defining for me.

I don't think of myself as a model. I'm genderqueer, and I've got tattoos.

I always find it amazing that people get mad because they can't figure out my gender. Even though my only job here is to create art, I think being a genderless figure... it shakes people. And when that happens, it makes me feel like I'm doing my job.

Character is made up of a variety of different things. One of those elements is gender.