Jennifer Beals Quotes

As a young girl, I never felt attractive. I was fat and unhappy at times, and that kind of thinking stays with you your entire life. There's always going to be a part of me that worries about not looking as slim as other actresses. But at a certain point, when you achieve a lot of your goals and you can be proud of your work, you start to relax more about who you are. And that includes your appearance and self-image - I don't think I look too bad for a mother of two. But women shouldn't have to feel the pressure to compare themselves to actresses or models.

Growing up, and the way that the media portrays, you're supposed to look a certain way. Muscles aren't beautiful. Muscles aren't feminine.

I think there are always different times in your life when you go, "Oh, god. I wish I were traditionally pretty. My life would be so much easier." But then you get through that, and you go, "Well, I'm not."

There's so many people telling you what you should look like, what you shouldn't look like, what clothes you should be wearing, whether you're too fat or too thin, you're hair should be this shape... you're bombarded. So, I like films that show girls going through that quagmire and coming out the other side really confident in themselves and strong in themselves.

Our culture puts a lot of pressure on the idea that a woman's self-worth is defined by her looks. It's just awful. And they also put a tremendous premier on youth, which is so, so debilitating and upsetting to so many women. I don't know why they're so dopey. Seriously. I don't see any problem with that and if you do, you should celebrate it. Don't chop your face up.

Even when I was in my 20s and at my most beautiful, I was never obsessed with my looks. I didn't dye my hair or wear make-up.

For girls growing up, sometimes I think they get the wrong idea for what women should look like.

With women, the way they look... it's the core of their self-esteem.

I used to want to be tall, and then I thought, 'If I were tall, then people would say I was pretty and not cute.' And then I realized that there are worse things than being called cute.

I'm not interested in Botox or getting a facelift. There comes a point where you have to let go and accept that you are no longer the youngest and that you have other things to offer.

I find it interesting that 16-year-olds are having plastic surgery. People in their 40s used to think, 'I'm aging, I have to do something about it.' Now children are deciding they don't like the way they look.

I always hated my mole growing up. I even thought about having it removed. At the time I didn't do it because I thought it would hurt, and now I'm glad I didn't.

There are so many images pushed at women and so many ideas of what you're supposed to be. I think there's too much of this superwoman, this woman with a bottom like two billiard balls. There's no real celebration of just being a person.

So many girls only care about guys and looking good all the time.

Even when I wasn't overweight I was never one of those girls or women who wanted to look nice. I always thought it wasn't important.

Everyone wants to look their best, everyone has dreams of wanting to look like something else. But we are who we are.

If taking one-self seriously as a woman means committing to a life of grooming, pumicing, pruning and polishing one's exterior for the benefit of onlookers, then I may as well leave my unwieldy rucksack to the top of a bleak Scottish hill and make my home there under a stone, where I'll fashion shoes out of mud and clothes out of leaves.

I was always a little insecure. I had brothers that played football, so I was just a straight-up tomboy for a minute. I didn't know makeup and hair stuff. My friends had to tell me what a straightener was. I didn't know fashion or any of that until the label gave me a stylist.

I'll never be like a Barbie girl, that's for sure.

When I was growing up, one or two girls were beautiful, but it was not an aspiration, right?

I come from a family of tall, curvy women. I developed in my body and my shape far earlier, so from a young age I accepted it. I embraced it and saw it as an advantage.

Women's behavior in handling beauty, even before feminism, was to deny they had any. Don't hate me because I'm beautiful.

It's sad when girls think they don't have anything going on except being pretty.

To go from hating the way I looked to being a 'Cosmo' centerfold is a profound honor.

When women make their image about youth and sexuality, and not about intellect, that's kind of a dead-end road. So I think it's a combination of self-entrapment and entrapment by society.