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Body Image Quotes

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Body Image Quotes

“She may resent Playboy because she resents feeling ugly in sex--or, if "beautiful," her body defined and diminished by pornography. It inhibits in her something she needs to live, and gives her the ultimate anaphrodisiac: the self-critical sexual gaze. Alice Walker's essay "Coming Apart" investigates the damage done: Comparing herself to her lover's pornography, her heroine "foolishly" decides that she is not beautiful.”

CultureBeautySocietyFeminismSelf EsteemAgingMarketingEqualitySexualityAdvertisingMagazinesPornographyBody ImageEating DisordersCosmeticsPlastic SurgeryFashion IndustryDouble StandardsObjectificationSexual ViolenceImagesMass CultureCosmetic SurgeryDiet Industry
Book:The Beauty Myth
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“[Women's magazines]ignore older women or pretend that they don’t exist; magazines try to avoid photographs of older women, and when they feature celebrities who are over sixty, ‘retouching artists’ conspire to ‘help’ beautiful women look more beautiful, ie less than their age...By now readers have no idea what a real woman’s 60 year old face looks like in print because it’s made to look 45. Worse, 60 year old readers look in the mirror and think they are too old, because they’re comparing themselves to some retouched face smiling back at them from a magazine.”

BeautySocietySelf EsteemAgingMagazinesEditingBody Image
Author:Dalma Heyn
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“My body will never tell you what my favorite flower is Or how I want them more than only once a year It won't tell you that I love to knit But have never finished a single project It will never show you that I hate sunrises Or that every night I tell the stars goodnight before bed Or how much I love horror movies even though I always get too scared to sleep alone afterward My body will never let you know my worst memories My body will never share my deepest secrets Or ever utter my most hopeful of wishes You never seemed to understand that.”

RelationshipsSelf EsteemSelf LoveBody ImageHealing JourneyTrauma Healing
Book:There's This Girl
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“With the body judged externally, dismay will be rife. Success means looking younger every year, as the women in the gym seem to. Success means regulating the body: controlling hungers, desires, ageing and emissions. Success means seeing the body as a lifelong work. Success means anticipating faults - physical, medical, and aesthetic - and correcting them. But when and if the ordinary processes of the body cannot be sufficiently restraint, which of course they can't, the body becomes a source of consternation as well as failure.”

BodySelf EsteemBody Image
Book:Bodies
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“As females, most of us have spent a lifetime being inundated with the message that our worth is inextricably linked to our attractiveness. We are trained from our earliest years to turn a critical eye on ourselves: Are we thin enough? Too thin? Tall enough? Too tall? Athletic enough? Too athletic? Curvy enough? Too curvy? And the list goes on. The ideal of attractiveness is mercurial and capricious, ever-shifting and forever-out-of-reach. It is an impossible ideal by its very nature. And it is a lie. To walk through life with calm assurance, clothed in confidence in our femininity and self-worth, requires that we first recognize and reject the lie that our worth is tied to our attractiveness. We must learn to appreciate and accept the endless array of attributes that make each of us a wonderfully and gorgeously unique human. We must discover for ourselves the truth that our worth lies solely in our existence. That to exist is to be worthy of love and acceptance and fulfillment and companionship and tenderness and happiness. When we can see and accept that our existence is what makes us worthy, we will finally be able to accept our own worthiness, to love our female skin in all of its unique glory, and to walk confidently and comfortably in a world desperate for the love that we can now freely give.”

WorldLoveLifeSelf EsteemSelf AwarenessFeministWomanFeminineBody Image
Author:L.R. Knost
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“Sometimes you need a reminder that negative comments about your body aren’t even really about your body, they’re about society and our society’s wrongheaded and impossibly narrow definition of a “good” body. Your body didn’t do anything wrong. What’s fucked up about your body is not your body at all, but that your body has to live in a society that thinks it has a right to say fucked up things about your body.”

InspirationalSocietyBody ImageSocietal NormsBody Hatred
Author:Golda Poretsky
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“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
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“Our bodies are everything. They are the tools our mothers and their mothers used to end wars. Women have used their bodies to demand the right to vote, the right to work, the right to birth control, the right to safe working conditions, the right to choose, the right to equal funding for sports and education, and the right to say NO. Our bodies are agents of change.”

FeminismSelf LoveWellnessBody ImageHealth And WellnessWellness QuotesFeminism QuotesBody LoveWellness That Works
Book:Physical Disobedience: An Unruly Guide to Health and Stamina for the Modern Feminist
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“Each step and every healthy bite takes us closer to well-being, closer to raw, unrepentant liberty at home, at work, in our neighborhoods, and within the confines of our own minds.”

FeminismSelf LoveWellnessBody ImageHealth And WellnessWellness QuotesFeminism QuotesBody LoveWellness That WorksBody Care
Book:Physical Disobedience: An Unruly Guide to Health and Stamina for the Modern Feminist
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“Before we can make seismic professional, economic, and sociological changes, we have to squeeze out of our Spanx and remember how it feels to breathe—with sweat in our eyes, air in our lungs, and music pouring boldly from our speakers.”

FeminismSelf LoveWellnessBody ImageHealth And WellnessWellness QuotesFeminism QuotesBody LoveWellness That WorksBody Care
Book:Physical Disobedience: An Unruly Guide to Health and Stamina for the Modern Feminist
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“We can turn off the twenty-four-hour coverage and take a walk and a deep breath and return home to wrap our arms around our kids, pets, lovers, or friends.”

FeminismSelf LoveWellnessBody ImageHealth And WellnessWellness QuotesFeminism QuotesBody LoveWellness That WorksBody Care
Book:Physical Disobedience: An Unruly Guide to Health and Stamina for the Modern Feminist
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“With our physical bodies at ease, we are better able to serve, to function, and to show up when we are needed, fists raised in unison in nonviolent protest over a sea of living, breathing bodies—wide- awake and as loud as we damn well please.”

FeminismSelf LoveWellnessBody ImageHealth And WellnessWellness QuotesFeminism QuotesBody LoveWellness That Works
Book:Physical Disobedience: An Unruly Guide to Health and Stamina for the Modern Feminist
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“The choice to be in our bodies without shame is the most important thing each of us can do to facilitate being feminists, caretakers, geeks, revolutionaries, tree huggers, experts or advocates.”

FeminismSelf LoveWellnessBody ImageHealth And WellnessWellness QuotesFeminism QuotesBody LoveWellness That Works
Book:Physical Disobedience: An Unruly Guide to Health and Stamina for the Modern Feminist
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“With our physical bodies at ease, we are better able to serve, to function, and to show up when we are needed, fists raised in unison in non-violent protest over a sea of living, breathing bodies—wide-awake and as loud as we damn well please.”

FeminismSelf LoveWellnessBody ImageHealth And WellnessWellness QuotesFeminism QuotesBody LoveWellness That Works
Book:Physical Disobedience: An Unruly Guide to Health and Stamina for the Modern Feminist
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“No more starving. No more challenges. No more fasts. No more pills. Food is not the enemy, and fighting it is making us sick. Food is the remedy that will make us well.”

FeminismSelf LoveWellnessBody ImageHealth And WellnessWellness QuotesFeminism QuotesBody LoveWellness That Works
Book:Physical Disobedience: An Unruly Guide to Health and Stamina for the Modern Feminist
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“I think that if you regularly practice an activity that involves moving your body a lot, you will love your body for what it allows you to do, not for what it looks like. If you’re a dancer, a runner, a yogi or a soccer player, you need your body’s cooperation to be able to perform. So you’ll treat it right for that reason. And appreciate all of its strength and beauty also for that reason.”

InspirationalSportsBeautyConfidencePositivityBody Image
Book:From Catwalk To Freedom
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“In 2024 I proudly joined the 'Women over 40' club, somehow arriving without coloring my hair, getting botox, fillers or plastic surgery. In today’s predominantly 'plastic cookie-cutter' culture, that’s a beautiful and rebellious statement— one celebrating authenticity and humanity in its purest form. Living long enough to earn wrinkles, grey hair and deal with an aging body is a privilege not all of us are granted. That is why I will always wear my age with gratitude and fierce passion.”

Women EmpowermentBody ImageInspirational WomenNatural BeautyAging QuotesElena LevonElena Levon QuotesAging WomenAging With Grace
Author:Elena Levon
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“Culture alone cannot explain the phenomena of such high rates of eating disorders. Eating disorders are complex, but what they all seem to have in common is the ability to distract women from the memories, sensations, and experience of the sexual abuse through starving, bingeing, purging, or exercising. They keep the focus on food, body image, weight, fat, calories, diets, miles, and other factors that women focus on during the course of an eating disorder. These disorders also have the ability to numb a woman from the overwhelming emotions resulting from the sexual abuse — especially loss of control, terror, and shame about her body. Women often have a combination of eating disorders in in their history. Some women are anorexic during one period of their life, bulimic during another, and compulsive eaters at yet another stage.”

CultureWomenEmotionsShameOverwhelmingSexual AbuseBody ImageEating DisordersChild Sexual AbuseBingePurgeAnorexicBody ShameCompulsiveBulimicNumbe
Book:Healing from the Trauma of Childhood Sexual Abuse: The Journey for Women
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“Your ideal weight is a collection of experiences, feelings, ambitions, and mental processes. It's a space that is fluid, ever-changing, and abstract. There is no numerical relation to what is best. Instead, you must live your life free from numerical restraints. An ideal weight is not one you can predict, choose, or write down as a digit. Rather, it's a place you reach by thinking very little about your body at all. You reach it without realizing it, You reach it without micromanaging it, You reach it without judgement. And you reach it seemingly by accident while living your life to its fullest every day.”

Body ImageWeight LossEating DisordersEating Disorder RecoveryWeight GainEating Disorder QuoteRecovery From Eating DisorderAnorexia RecoveryBulimia RecoveryBinge Eating Recovery
Author:Brittany Burgunder
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