Quotes About Expectations

It's not always so great to be objectified, but I don't feel I have much of a choice right now. I'm young in my career. I know I have to strike when the iron is hot.

There's a lot of pressure on women to fulfill certain fantasies. They expect you to be a little bit of a tart, to flirt with all the men. A lot of women do it. But I'm not doing that. I talk with these guys about their wives and kids right away. When they say inappropriate things, I let them, because boys will be boys, but I'm not looking to participate in their conversations.

All moms need confidants who are in their shoes and can relate to what they're going through. You need a night out together to be who you are, and not feel like you have to be the career woman, wife and mommy--all at once. After all, we're not superwomen.

There's no such thing as a perfect guy. I think it would be strange if somebody was absolutely everything you always wanted, because then there'd be no challenge. Also, you'd feel inferior. If somebody is that perfect, how can you not think of yourself as being so imperfect next to him? I think people are perfect in their imperfections.

You know," Rolf said, "you read stories when you're little, and you think it would be so amazing to have adventures happen to you. Then you actually go on one, and find out that it's awful. Nothing but bad food, sleeping cold on the hard ground, and treachery.

We had this angry phone conversation where he said something like, "We've been working on this thing for a whole month, and it's still not finished." It's funny in retrospect, because we were still working on it 3 years later.

It never occurred to me to be happy with my lot.

He just wasn't the guy, you know? I want the guy. The everything guy. Not the dumb Prince Charming, nauseatingly-perfect everything guy. That's pathetic. I want the flaws-and-all everything guy.

In every interview I have ever read or seen or taken part in, the final question in our future-oriented society is always, What next?

A fact of modern life is that it takes women longer to get ready than men.

In interviews I gave early on in my career, I was quoted as saying it was possible to have it all: a dynamic job, marriage, and children. In some respects, I was a social adolescent.

For years, I occupied my time trying and failing to be the woman the men in my life wanted me to be. Never just me. I ran into situation after situation, telling myself that the reason I had so much anxiety and was scared to death to be alone at night was because I just needed to be a better person for whomever I was trying to please at the time.

With the same fervor that my mom now flips houses, my parents fixed people throughout my childhood. We took in people who were sick or neglected, and it wasn't always fun. Sometimes it was a chore to share my parents with others. Our family time was always with others, whether they were there physically or talked about in our prayers. "To whom much is given, much is expected," was what I heard. I understood, but sometimes I didn't feel we had much to share.

I thought I had the job, and now I had to change myself to be "Jessica Simpson." It was as if he tied my value as an artist to my weight right there, like a rock, and then threw it out the window of the thirty-second floor of the Sony building. Maybe Tommy was being realistic about the times, and he knew what it would take for me to be successful. He believed in me, and he would be a beautiful part of my career, but it was hard to hear what was required to be a star.

When people saw the real me, they wanted me to succeed. It was a fleeting thought, and I wish I had caught it and internalized it. I still thought people expected perfection.

While falling in love is fun, it's not everything, and it's not the antidote to an unfulfilled life, despite what Reese Witherspoon movies may tell you.

Making women the sexual gatekeepers and telling men they just can't help themselves not only drives home the point that women's sexuality is unnatural, but also sets up a disturbing dynamic in which women are expected to be responsible for men's sexual behavior.

Shit is fucked up when it comes to appearances and women. We're expected to be hot - but if we are, we're vain and stupid. And if we're not hot we're useless. Kind of hard to get around. But we're not stupid. We know that we're doing damage to ourselves - not only to our bodies but also to our mental well-being. And it's not worth it.

The cultural insistence that parenting is the 'most important' job in the world is a smart way to satiate unappreciated women without doing a damn thing for them.

According to pop culture, women are either searching for a man, with a man, or getting over one.

Being treated nicely felt wrong somehow, as if we were acting out what a relationship should be rather than being in it. For men who hate women, an admission like this one is proof that see, women want a guy who treats them like shit but that's not true either. What is closer to the truth is that when confronted with the love you deserve, it is easier to mock it than accept it.

So as lovely as romance can be, we have to make sure that we're not falling into the trap of making our entire life about searching for an unrealistic notion of happiness. While falling in love is fun, it's not everything, and it's not the antidote to an unfulfilled life, despite what Reese Witherspoon movies may tell you.

Social expectations about what constitutes a good or a bad mother haunt every decision, and the rise of the parental advice industry ensures that moms and dads feel inadequate at every turn.

Parents expect their children to be their soul mates in the same way they expect of their spouse—they want children to make their lives and families complete.