“But if the Final Girl is an exception to the female rule, she can’t be our avatar. Most of us, by definition, are not exceptional. It’s when we shift out focus to the margins, and all the non-Final, ordinary, disposable girls who are stripped and splayed and stabbed and ripped apart, that the next part of our story becomes clear.” FeminismFinal Girl Book:Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers Source: Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers
“Trainwrecks, as public figures, are necessarily also myths. But they’re the villains of the story; they’re our monsters and demons, images of what we fear, and who we fear becoming. I hated Britney early on, because I hated being forced into the role she seemingly enjoyed playing; I wanted to reject the feminine ideal she supposedly embodied, and I wound up rejecting her. But every wreck is a potential role that women need or want to reject; the magnitude of our hatred for them is determined by how powerfully we fear what they represent. In Britney’s case, she represented the end of youth, and the corruption of purity: She was the pretty, good little girl who became ugly and bad when she grew up, the “Queen of Teen” who was used- up and over-the-hill by age twenty-five. She was the Wages of Feminism, the working mother who tried to have it all and wound up nearly dropping her baby onto the sidewalk. She was the cost of public life, for women.” Feminism Book:Trainwreck: The Women We Love to Hate, Mock, and Fear... and Why Source: Trainwreck: The Women We Love to Hate, Mock, and Fear... and Why
“Once a woman is free to desire and pursue her own desires, she moves beyond the reach of our empathy; she's a threat that must be contained or destroyed.” SexWomenFeminism Book:Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers Source: Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers
“Female monstrosity inspires terror because it really can end the world—or our current version of it, anyway. But our world is not the only one, or the best one, and in fact, the more time I spend with monsters, the more I think its destruction is overdue.” FeminismFemaleMonstersMonstrosity Book:Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers Source: Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers