cultural perceptions of beauty Quotes

The feminine vanity-case is the graveyard of masculine illusions.

Beauty is on one level pure surface, and on the other hand, it's the most complex subject that we can touch upon because it says everything about us as people. It's a subject we very quickly begin to argue about. I think that's so interesting.

Relaxing your hair is like being in prison. You're caged in. Your hair rules you. You didn't go running with Curt today because you don't want to sweat out this straightness. You're always battling to make your hair do what it wasn't meant to do.

I don't even know how ugly and pretty get decided.

And my one prayer to God, the miracle worker, was that I would wake up lighter-skinned.

The thing is, you don't even want to be mad about someone calling you fat because who the f--- cares? Like if somebody tells me, 'Oh, you look curvier.' That should not be a diss. The fact is, we live in a time where that is a diss. It's horrible we can be like, 'You look so skinny,' and someone's like, 'Thank you!' That's horrible. That's equally as horrible to me. So the time we live in, it's upsetting.

It is doubtful whether anyone who has travelled widely has found anywhere in the world regions more ugly than in the human face.

The way we value black beauty has changed. I'm single now, but back in the slave days, I would have never been single. I'm 6 feet tall and I'm strong. Look at me, I'm a Mandingo.

I never quite understand the way society decides who is beautiful and who is not. But an open face and a capacity for kindness always feel like reliable signifiers to me.

Women's modesty generally increases with their beauty.

Back home the black women are all beautiful

Canadian girls are so pretty it's a relief now and then to see a plain one.

The girls in California were probably prettier in a standard sense than the New York girls--blonder and in better health, I guess; but I still preferred the way the girls in New York looked--stranger and more neurotic (a girl always looked more beautiful and fragile when she was about to have a nervous breakdown).

Any random group of thirty Vietnamese women will contain a dozen who make Julia Roberts look like Lyle Lovett.