“Now those moments seem proof that self-love is an instinct, as animal as any other function of the self. The ferocity of my affection could not be erased, only suppressed under total vigilance. My self-hatred was not self-generated. It was an expression of the environment outside of my body, which, it eventually turned out, I could change.” FeminismSelf LoveEmpowermentSelf DiscoveryBody ImageSelf Image Book:Girlhood Source: Girlhood
“It is through the collaboration of all these factors, of course, that patriarchy is enforced: an elegant machinery whose pistons fire silently inside their own minds, and whose gleaming gears we mistake for our own jewelry.” FeminismMale Gaze Book:Girlhood Source: Girlhood
“This is a love story, though. The kind where the lover laments all the years she lost at the altar of some false god. When regret seeps in, I try to remember the Hecatoncheires. They did not defeat the Titans as children. They lived under their power. They were of the Titans. It took years for their strength to surpass that of the old gods. But when they did? They threw mountains, a hundred at a time, one for each great hand. And what if they had been taught to hate their own strength? Maybe it would have taken a hundred years for them to grasp a mountain in hand, to understand what they could do, that they could make their own Olympus.” FeminismBody ImageEssayBody PositivityPatriarchal Culture Book:Girlhood Source: Girlhood
“Instead of criminal, women's bodies are inherently defective, aesthetically defective. To the body whose value is judged almost solely on aesthetics, it is a devastating sentence. We are too short, too tall, too fat, too thin, too dark, too stiff, too loose, too solicitous, too yielding, too assertive, too weak, or too strong.” WomenFeminismGirl PowerSelf ImageBeauty StandardsEmpowerment Of WomenMale Gaze Book:Girlhood Source: Girlhood
“I am that careless girl, hands sunk haphazardly into the dough, bedroom a sty, pen stilled against her hand, eyes cast out the window, humming a song, thinking of something else. I am that outspoken witch; I will disagree with any man. I am a firework gone off in the dark, a spectacle of disobedience, a grand finale of orgasms anytime I want.” FeminismSexualityGirl PowerSlut Shaming Book:Girlhood Source: Girlhood
