Angeles Mastretta Quotes

. . . a woman can be a woman and a true one without having all her time engrossed by dress and society.

Our culture has created two almost irreconcilable descriptions of a 'good woman.' The first is the individual achiever; the second, the self-sacrificing domestic goddess.

From a young age, I felt like I was supposed to be the sort of female who is doing something strong.

Nowadays, independence is so promoted, it would be crazy for me to say I'd want a traditional woman who wants to stay at home.

At my graduation, I thought we had to marry what we wished to become. Now you are becoming the men you once would have wished to marry.

There is a latent fairy in all women, but look how carefully we have to secrete her in order to be taken seriously. And fairies come in all shapes, colours, sizes and types, they don't have to be fluffy. They can be demanding and furious if hey like. They do, however, have to wear a tiara. That much is compulsory.

In the older times it was seldom said to little girls, as it always has been said to boys, that they ought to have some definite plan, while they were children, what to be and do when they were grown up. There was usually but one path open before them, to become good wives and housekeepers. And the ambition of most girls was to follow their mothers' footsteps in this direction; a natural and laudable ambition. But girls, as well as boys, must often have been conscious of their own peculiar capabilities,--must have desired to cultivate and make use of their individual powers.

I think a woman can have all of the ideas and mental pictures. She can be a real planner and a motivator. But in the end, I think a woman does best when she responds to a man.

I think a lot of young girls go through that period in their life of finding who they are, and at that point, looking good matters the most.

There's so much to becoming a woman.

I don't understand women who try to be glamour queens.

Women today are dealing with both their independence and also the fact that their lives are built around finding and satisfying the romantic models we grew up with.

That is partly why women marry - to keep up the fiction of being in the hub of things.

I was a very young girl and I got into fashion very much by accident, wanting to be independent. What was wonderful was that while I was learning and discovering - learning about the work, discovering myself as a woman - I was allowing other women to feel the same way.

Doing 'All Good Things' really felt like I was acting for myself rather than anyone else. It gave me a freedom I'd never had before, or knew I had, to do whatever I want to, and to argue my opinions and not just feel like the cute girl on set or the girl in a boy's club. I figured out how I could be both. And it's been different ever since.

When I was growing up, there was still that narrative of 'you finish school, you go and get married, you become somebody's wife and you get kids and tend to them.' I think it is really important to reach for something.

I grew up with that completely fictive idea of motherhood, where the mother never strayed from the kitchen. All the women in my books are very afraid that if they do anything with their minds they won't be complete women. I don't think my daughters' generation has that feeling.

I think I would have died if there hadn't been the women's movement. It gave me a vision that I could do something different, and it gave me an understanding that I wasn't a monster, or sport, or a betrayer of my family.

Very often, people talk about mothers, and they think that mother has to lose her sexuality. Mother has to be plain. Mothers cannot be exciting. Mother should not be up on what's going on; she shouldn't know the jargon of the day. And I just find that so old-fashioned!

The character I've created, Christine, is mainly the first attempt for me to escape all the secret injunctions we have as girls all the time. Like, be pretty but be polite. Don't take too much space. All those things that didn't mean anything to me. I just decided to turn them around with my character.

And I think every woman can be a diva, and every woman can be just a woman. I think life is a runway, and you can do everything you want. If you want.

It is a lot to learn, and unique, but it is commonplace here in Atlanta where the man takes care of things and the woman becomes a homemaker, and later on in the relationship, a mother, which isn't the things that I ever considered. I think Cody thought that I would want that for my life since he grew up in that, but that is just not me.

Starting out as young women, we didn't care that people thought that we were a fad or if people thought we didn't dress girly enough - we were just like, 'Whatever.' We were able to accomplish that with three totally different girls, in a group.

There's a great deal of tension between so many kind of distinctive and restrictive female archetypes and images in the world. When you play with the archetypes, you get free.

Women are super-dynamic. I can be whatever I want to be. I can have interests in so many different kinds of things.