Quotes About Femininity

It was very dark in there. The air smelled stagnant and sweaty and the drinks were so strong they fumed. But the women were magnificent, like enormous birds: feathery false eyelashes fluttering, tight, shiny dresses in peacock blue and canary yellow, the dim light reflecting off their sequins. Mayita and I stood out. We were puny, dressed in jeans and drab sweaters, little pigeons.

Proving that you are hot, worthy of lust, and—necessarily—that you seek to provoke lust is still exclusively women's work.

Let's smell like women, armed to teeth with rage!

All we have to do is idly sit indoors With smooth roses powdered on our cheeks, Our bodies burning naked through the fold Of shining Amorgos' silk and meet the men With our dear Venus-plats plucked trim and neat. Their stirring love will rise up furiously, They'll beg our arms to open. That's our time! We'll disregard their knocking beat them off And they will soon be rabid for a Peace I'm sure of it.

The female is, as it were, a mutilated male, and the catamenia are semen, only not pure; for there is only one thing they have not in them, the principle of soul.

Now, she thought; I may go mad, but at least I look like a lady.

One of the most erogenous zones of a woman is her intelligence.

You know what they say: a woman was made with nine measures of talk.

It takes a man to make a woman feel female, Jennifer thought, to make her feel beautiful, to make her feel wanted.

She used a lot of makeup—thick, dark eyeliner, false eyelashes, colored eye shadow and bright lipstick. It was as though she were trying to hide her beauty.

Woman ... what does she want?

The great question that has never been answered , and which I have not yet been able to answer , despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul , is What does a woman want?

The female genital is symbolically represented by all those objects which share its peculiarity of enclosing a space capable of being filled by something—viz., by pits, caves, and hollows, by pitchers and bottles, by boxes and trunks, jars, cases, pockets, etc. Theship, too, belongs in this category.

The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is 'What does a woman want?

Do everything you can to get men to look at you, and when they do, pretend they don't exist. Because only a slut looks back. Is that perfectly clear? Early lesson on the female condition.

On ne naît pas femme: on le devient.

Masculine desire is as much an offence as it is a compliment; in so far as she feels herself responsible for her charm, or feels she is exerting it of her own accord, she is much pleased with her conquests, but to the extent that her face, her figure, her flesh are facts she must bear with, she wants to hide them from this independent stranger who lusts after them.

And yet we are told that femininity is in danger; we are exhorted to be women, remain women, become women. It would appear, then, that every female human being is not necessarily a woman; to be so considered she must share in that mysterious and threatened reality known as femininity. Is this attribute something secreted by the ovaries? Or is it Platonic essence, a product of the philosophic imagination? Is a rustling petticoat enough to bring it down to earth?

Misogynists have often reproached intellectual women for 'letting themselves go'; but they also preach to them: if you want to be our equals, stop wearing makeup and polishing your nails. This advice is absurd. Precisely because the idea of femininity is artificially defined by customs and fashion, it is imposed on every woman from the outside[...]. The individual is not free to shape the idea of femininity at will.

The feminine body is expected to be flesh, but discreetly so;

Lo que es seguro es que ahora es muy difícil para las mujeres asumir a un tiempo su condición de individuo autónomo y su destino femenino; es la fuente de estas torpezas y malestares que a veces las presenta como un sexo perdido. Y sin duda es más cómodo sufrir la esclavitud ciega que trabajar por la liberación: los muertos también están mejor adaptados a la tierra que los vivos.

On nous exhorte: 'Soyez femmes, restez femmes, devenez femmes.' Tout être humain femelle n'est donc pas nécessairament une femme; il lui faut participer à cette réalité mystérieuse et menacée qu'est la féminité. (...) Celle-ci est-elle sécrétée par les ovoires? Suffit-il d'un jupon à frou-frou pour la faire descendre sur terre?

she gives birth in pain, she heals males' wounds, she nurses the newborn and buries the dead; of man she knows all that offends his pride and humiliates his will. While inclining before him and submitting flesh to spirit, she remains on the carnal borders of the spirit; and she contests the sharpness of hard masculine architecture by softening the angles; she introduces free luxury and unforeseen grace.

So not every female human being is necessarily a woman; she must take part in this mysterious and endangered reality known as femininity. Is femininity secreted by the ovaries? Is it enshrined in a Platonic heaven?