Julie Burchill Quotes

All women in Hollywood are known as sex symbols.

With pop music and pop musicians, you know everything about everyone all the time, particularly their physical appearance. With female musicians, that's made a big thing of, and I think people, certainly with me, have appreciated a bit of mystery.

I think any girl who comes to Hollywood with sex symbol or bombshell hanging over her has a rough road.

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

I'd be lying if I said I never think about my female fans in certain shots and certain scenes. Like, when I'm topless, I might think: 'This one is for the ladies.'

I hope that I'm sexy in a different kind of way than I think that a lot of girls are right now. I think a lot of girls in the public eye, especially musical artists, are just kind of objectified a little bit and wearing super-skimpy outfits and leaving nothing to the imagination.

As an actress - and as an actor, too, but it's worse for actresses - you constantly get picked apart for how you look.

I think all women in Hollywood are known as sex symbols. That's what our purpose is in this business. You're merchandised, you're a product. You're sold and it's based on sex. But that's okay. I think women should be empowered by that, not degraded.

There are some strong female performers out there. But the industry's pre-occupation with the packaging of how a woman looks has gone completely the other way, back to almost the 60s, early 70s.

I hate the term 'arm candy.' But, look, a woman's figure is a beautiful thing, and if she has shapely legs, then she should show them off, because men love to see that. Not just heterosexual men - gay men like to see a woman in her beauty and the shape of her.

We're in the dark ages if J-Lo can have a music career because of her ass. And let's face it, that's it.

I find the whole concept of women screaming at me so odd. It's very flattering, but I don't think I will ever consider myself to be a sex symbol.

Even today, in our progressive times, in most movies that come out, the men have to have biceps and the women have to be thin or something.

If you were an alien who came to our bookstores - or browsed our teen magazines - you'd think that only Earth girls who look like Mila Kunis ever got any action.

Let's forget the cliche on girlfriends, from Serena to Sharapova. I say it's easy to get lost in beauty, but is it a mistake then?

I'm not a sex symbol, at least in the conventional sense.

The people I look up to most are actresses such as Kate Winslet and Amy Schumer, who have never been size zero and are judged on their bodies of work, not their bodies.

If you look at the role models that are out there, the women that tend to be photographed tend to be actresses and models, whereas the men are often in the media because of what they do in terms of business and sport.

There are the aesthetic pressures for a woman to be pretty and sexy, but not sexual or have desires beyond winning a guy's affections.

Most times, women are seen through the male gaze, so they are often shown as housewives, girlfriends, or objects of desire.

I was frustrated in general with the way women are always portrayed. And it's always through a man's eyes.

I think objectifying women is not wrong if only her beauty is captured in an aesthetic manner.

I told my girls, 'Look at Rihanna: She's one of the biggest pop stars in the world. She's really famous, really powerful, really rich. Yet in every single video she can only wear panties. Poor Rhianna! We'll know when she is properly powerful and successful when we see her in a lovely cardigan.'

I don’t think there’s any such thing as male objectification…I think that word exists only with women because there are societal pressures for them to behave a certain way and to look a certain way. Someone put it to me once: Women are sex objects and men are success objects. That was really interesting to me.

A lady once expressed herself in society - the very words show that they were uttered with fervour and under the pressure of a great many secret emotions: "Yes, a woman must be pretty if she is to please the men. A man is much better off. As long as he has five straight limbs, he needs no more!"