Quotes About Femininity

Phyllida's hair was where her power resided. It was expensively set into a smooth dome, like a band shell for the presentation of that long-running act, her face.

Pregnancy made her feel too much like an animal. It was embarrassing to be so publicly colonized.

but the corset had the odd power of making her seem somehow more naked; it turned her into a forbidden, armored creature with a soft side inside he had to hunt for.

As meninas estavam enormes naqueles vestidos de cerimónia, construídos à volta de uma estrutura de arame. Tinham quilos e quilos de cabelo, bem presos, na cabeça. Embriagadas, beijando-nos, ou a desmaiar nas cadeiras, estavam destinadas ao ensino superior, aos maridos, à educação dos filhos, à infelicidade que dificilmente se percebia - enfim, à vida.

I should also mention, with the vestigial pang of a once flat-chested girl, Desdemona's voluptuous figure.

The Lisbon girls were thirteen (Cecelia), and fourteen (Lux), and fifteen (Bonnie), and sixteen (Mary), and seventeen (Therese).

My mother pictured a daughter as a counterinsurgent: a fellow lover of lapdogs, a seconder of proposals to attend the Ice Capades. In

None of us went to church, so we had a lot of time to watch them, the two parents leached of color, like photographic negatives, and then the five glittering daughters in their homemade dresses, all lace and ruffle, bursting with their fructifying flesh.

There's two kinds of women--those you write poems about and those you don't.

Statistics show that men are interested in three things: careers, sports, and sex. That's why they love professional cheerleaders.

There never were any women who liked to cook for men everyday. There were only women who cooked for survival and pretended to like it. And now there are men who cook for survival. Like you. Think of this as survivalist training. Very macho.

Breasts are very important for women. Their clothes just don't hang right without them.

Jane Austen was born before those bonds which (we are told) protected women from the truth were burst by the Brontës or elaborately untied by George Eliot.… Jane Austen may have been protected from truth: but it was precious little of truth that was protected from her." G.K. CHESTERTON

Jo thought sometimes that Bethie liked to play at being a rebel, when the truth was that her sister had a genius for conformity, for making herself the best, most stylish example of whatever version of femininity was currently in fashion.

being born female meant spending years of you life at risk, and the rest of it invisible, existing as prey or barely existing at all.

It's almost religious, that belief, that faith that a piece of silk or denim or cotton jersey could disguise your flaws and amplify your assets and make you both invisible and seen, just another normal woman in the world; a woman who deserves to get what she wants.

That's why she keeps her nails long, she says, to be able to scratch and claw.

I'm going to call you Motherwort," I whispered, petting the baby fur as she scarfed down the food. "Wort for short, because motherwort is so good at healing girls, and this one right here"—I jabbed my thumb at myself—"has had a day.

Boys don't know how to be uncomfortable in their bodies, I realized, even the ones who don't look great. It's not that they can't be shy, or sad, or scared, just like girls. It's that they haven't been taught their bodies are bad their whole lives, like we are.

Nobody gets their period for the first time and has a nervous breakdown next to a Kohler toilet. Men have such stupid ideas about menstruation, don't they, Julie?

I don't wear lipstick when I'm not at work.

I'm not a 'sexy' 'beautiful' woman. It takes a lot of work to make me look like a girl.

I envy the sensibility in Europe, appreciating beauty in women as they age. I'm going to go that way. I might dye my gray hair for a bit, but beyond that the buck stops. I'm not having any work done.

I grew up in a family with two very strong women, my mother and my older sister, and they were big influences on my life. I've spent a life loving women, and studying them as much as I can, or am allowed to.