Feminine Ideals Quotes

A woman does not want the truth; what is truth to women? From the beginning, nothing has been more alien, repugnant, and hostile to woman than the truth - her great art is the lie, her highest concern is mere appearance and beauty.

Being a 'Lady' used to be something to which all young women aspired.

When women are relegated to moods, mannerisms, and contours that conform to a single ideal of beauty and behavior, they are captured in both body and soul, and are no longer free.

How deep is our desire to do better than our mothers--to bring daughters into adulthood strong and fierce yet loving and gentle, adventurous and competitive but still nurturing and friendly, sweet yet sharp. We know as working women that we can't quite have it all, but that hasn't stopped us from wanting it all for them.

Manly men and womanly women are still here but feeling nervous.

Grandmother belongs to the generation of women who were satisfied to have men retain their vices, if they removed their hats.

Marriage is traditionally the destiny offered to women by society. Most women are married or have been, or plan to be or suffer from not being.

Those that think my clothes are androgynous also still believe that women should look like Barbie dolls. That's precisely the problem, the deep-rooted assumptions about what is feminine.

My dissertation was on the idea of feminine-themed women's magazines, so like how the ideal woman is put across by women's magazines.

Among other things, drag queens are living testimony to the way women used to want to be, the way some people still want them to be, and the way some women still actually want to be. Drags are ambulatory archives of ideal moviestar womanhood. They perform a documentary service, usually consecrating their lives to keeping the glittering alternative alive and available for (not-too-close) inspection.

Man may content himself with the applause of the world and the homage paid to his intellect, but woman's heart has holier idols.

I realized that what I was saying was threatening, somehow, to the editors of women's magazines. That it threatened the very world they were trying to paint, what I then called the "feminine mystique."

There's always [on women's magazines] that great photo of the actress or model lifting up her shirt just to show you the bone structure and the six-pack of her own. It's almost like when horses are auctioned and they show you their teeth. 'Am I good enough?'

If you're a girl and you don't fit the very specific vision of what a girl should be, which is always from a man's perspective, then you're a little bit at a loss.

What all the ads and whorescopes seemed to imply was that if only you took proper care of your smells, your hair, your boobs, your eyelashes, your armpits, your crotch, your stars, your scars, your choice of Scotch in bars - you would meet a beautiful powerful, potent, and rich man who would satisfy every longing, fill every hole, make your heart skip a beat (or stand still), make you misty, and fly you to the moon (preferably on gossamer wings), where you would live totally satisfied forever.

While archetypes may emanate through us for short periods of time, in what we call numinous experience, no woman can emanate an archetype continuously. Only the archetype itself can withstand such projections such as ever-able, all giving, eternally energetic. We may try to emulate these, but they are ideals, not achievable by humans, and not meant to be. Yet the trap requires that women exhaust themselves trying to achieve these unrealistic levels. To avoid the trap, one has to learn to say 'Halt' and 'Stop the music,' and of course mean it.

Because a girl should have long hair, she should have clean hair; because she should have clean hair, she should not have an unclean home; because she should not have an unclean home, she should have a free and leisured mother; because she should have a free mother, she should not have an usurious landlord; because there should not be a usurious landlord, there should be a redistribution of property; because there should be a redistribution of property, there shall be a revolution.

Loss could be used as a measure of beauty in a woman.

Few girls are as well shaped as a good horse.

I want women on-screen that we all either want to be, or we know, or we recognize.

Women innately have this weird thing where they try to have a perfect persona - to look perfect, be perfect, act perfect, have their kids look a certain way. Women put so much pressure on themselves.

The fact that we are all trained to be mothers from infancy on means that we are all trained to devote our lives to men, whether they are our sons or not; that we are all trained to force other women to exemplify the lack of qualities which characterizes the cultural construct of femininity.

I'm all-American. Sexy but not intimidating. Not the kind of woman who's going to steal someone's husband.

The expectations of women are sometimes so unfair.

The demand that women "return to femininity" is a demand that the cultural gears shift into reverse, that we back up to a fabled time when everyone was richer, younger, more powerful.