Pippa Middleton Quotes

I wish my daughter wasn't spending time thinking of Kim Kardashian or Rihanna.

If you decide to tell a kid that looks don't matter, she can prove you wrong every day. Because they see it everywhere. That is age-old, going back to the Greeks, but now we're bombarded nonstop.

Throughout their lives, women try to pummel their bodies into some phantom ideal shape that exists only with a lot of airbrushing. ... I don't blame men for this. Men seem to go for us no matter what size and shape we are. I blame capitalism. No, really. The consumer must constantly be in a state of anxious low self-esteem so that she will constantly buy lipsticks and girdles to make her feel cuter.

We're always bombarded with images from magazines of what looks cool and sexy.

This is so American, man: either make something your God and cosmos and then worship it, or else kill it.

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.

By creating so many illusory images of physical perfection, whether on store aisles or storefront ads, magazine covers or TV shows, we speak more to the profit margins of companies than the self-esteem of today's girls.

Americans like fat books and thin women.

When I was younger, I used to look at movie stars with pencil-thin noses and think about a nose job. I've got a grown-up baby nose; it's not chiseled and structured. Then I saw how beautiful Audrey Tatou was in 'Amelie' and thought, 'She's got a nose like mine, and if she can have a baby nose, so can I.'

We live in a crazily youth-orientated world nowadays. It's a trickle-down thing. We see pictures of lithe, attractive celebrity couples such as Brad and Angelina or the Beckhams cavorting around, covered in tattoos, stomachs as flat as the singing in early 'X Factor' rounds.

I think people are learning to actually aspire to be objectified.

Thanks to capitalism, the importance placed on beauty has never been so manipulated. We are the guinea pigs force-fed ads that tell us how pathetic we are: that we will never be loved, happy or valuable unless we have the body, the face, the hair, even the personality that will apparently be ours, if only we buy their products.

Most women's magazines simply try to mold women into bigger and better consumers.

There's this idea that Hollywood sells over and over again: 'If I just looked more like this, I'd be accepted.'

Women in America read 'lifestyle' pages which are really glorifications of shopping. They teach us we must veil ourselves in make-up to be loved. And we willingly take the veil, thinking ourselves freed by it. Make-up is no more optional for us than the veil is for Arab women: it is our Western version of the chador.

I think women's bodies are a battleground and photography is partly to blame. Our society is so photographic now, it becomes more difficult to see all of those different varieties of shape.

I got very self-conscious about the way I look. So I, especially with young people coming into the industry and young actors, I feel it's really terrible to start with their looks. Right? Because especially for women, it just puts you in your head at a time when you should really be focused on your work and what you're saying and doing and not how you look.

Standards of beauty are arbitrary. Body shame exists only to the extent that our physiques don't match our own beliefs about how we should look.

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

American companies spend more than $200 billion each year hacking women's bodies into bits and pieces, urging comparisons between self and other, linking value to air-brushed ideals, and as the girls in my seventh-grade class graduated to high school and beyond, the imagery around us would only grow more specific, more pummeling, more insidious.

What is this drive to be thinner, prettier, better dressed, other? Who exactly is this other and what does she look like beyond the jacket she's wearing or the food she's not eating? What might we be doing, thinking, feeling about if we didn't think about body image, ever?

If you've looked at all the glamour magazines lately, all the covers are actresses. If they are on those covers, they are going to try to emulate models. That's just the way it is.

The message of the movie is to accept who you are and not to succumb to the pressure of what the media tells you is beautiful and what you should be looking like.

Taylor Swift is so flawless, and so unattainable, and I don't think it's breeding anything good in young girls.

I have a daughter, and it's a very bad message to send to my daughter that to be valid or accepted or to have value, you have to look a certain way. It's all about appearance, and not about education and not about contributing. I think we've completely lost our way.