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Double Standards Quotes

Browse 125 quotes about Double Standards.

Double Standards Quotes

“In reaction against the age-old slogan, "woman is the weaker vessel," or the still more offensive, "woman is a divine creature," we have, I think, allowed ourselves to drift into asserting that "a woman is as good as a man," without always pausing to think what exactly we mean by that. What, I feel, we ought to mean is something so obvious that it is apt to escape attention altogether, viz: (...) that a woman is just as much an ordinary human being as a man, with the same individual preferences, and with just as much right to the tastes and preferences of an individual. What is repugnant to every human being is to be reckoned always as a member of a class and not as an individual person.”

WomenFeminismEmpowermentDignityIndividualityGenderDiscriminationSelf DeterminationMisogynyStereotypesSocial NormsClassificationDouble StandardsClichés
Book:Are Women Human? Penetrating, Sensible and Witty Essays on the Role of Women in Society
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“Causing any damage or harm to one party in order to help another party is not justice, and likewise, attacking all feminine conduct [in order to warn men away from individual women who are deceitful] is contrary to the truth, just as I will show you with a hypothetical case. Let us suppose they did this intending to draw fools away from foolishness. It would be as if I attacked fire -- a very good and necessary element nevertheless -- because some people burnt themselves, or water because someone drowned. The same can be said of all good things which can be used well or used badly. But one must not attack them if fools abuse them.”

MenTruthWomenWaterFireDangerMoralityArgumentAbusePrejudiceIndividualityGenderHarmDamageHypocrisyMisogynyFoolishnessStereotypesSocial NormsDouble StandardsConductPerceptionsMisrepresentationClichésGeneralizationsOne Sidedness
Book:The Book of the City of Ladies
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“There is a disease that is out there. It spread faster than rumors. More deadly than nuclear weapon. More dangerous than Ebola , AIDS and HIV combined. This disease is called double standards. Many are suffering and dying because of double standards. It makes people overlook reality and facts, but concentrate on lies, hate and propaganda. Be true to yourself -”

LifePhilosophyFactsRealityInspirational QuotesMotivational QuotesEncouragement QuotesBe True To YourselfDouble Standards
Book:The Theory of 46 Be's
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“So here's the deal: I speak up in class, I get sent to office. Megan speaks up in class, she's a "strong, assertive model student."I post a few flyers saying that the vending machines on school property are a sign that our school has sold out to corporate-industrial establishment, I get (what else?) Saturday detention. Megan starts a campaign to serve local foods in the lunchroom (oh, and can we please maybe get rid of the soda machines?) and the local newspaper does a write-up about her. She's like me, only not. Not like me at all. She's the golden girl and I'm...tarnished. So forgive me if I hate her a little.”

SchoolPopularityDouble StandardsDiscrimnationGolden Girl
Book:Bad Girls Don't Die
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“If men could see us as we really are, they would be a little amazed; but the cleverest, the acutest men are often under an illusion about women: they do not read them in a true light: they misapprehend them, both for good and evil: their good woman is a queer thing, half doll, half angel; their bad woman almost always a fiend.”

WomenFeminismExpectationsEmpowermentGenderHypocrisyMisogynyStereotypesIllusionsDouble StandardsClichésMisconceptionsFalse Belief
Book:Shirley
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“Wine and women make wise men dote and forsake God's law and do wrong." However, the fault is not in the wine, and often not in the woman. The fault is in the one who misuses the wine or the woman or other of God's crations. Even if you get drunk on the wine and through this greed you lapse into lechery, the wine is not to blame but you are, in being unable or unwilling to discipline yourself. And even if you look at a woman and become caught up in her beauty and assent to sin [= adultery; extramarital sex], the woman is not to blame nor is the beauty given her by God to be disparaged: rather, you are to blame for not keeping your heart more clear of wicked thoughts. ... If you feel yourself tempted by the sight of a woman, control your gaze better ... You are free to leave her. Nothing constrains you to commit lechery but your own lecherous heart.”

MenWomenBeautyWineGreedGenderSexualityLustTemptationHypocrisyMisogynyAdulteryDrunkennessStereotypesImmoralitySocial NormsDouble StandardsClichés
Book:Dives and Pauper
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“Yet if women are so flighty, fickle, changeable, susceptible, and inconstant (as some clerks would have us believe), why is it that their suitors have to resort to such trickery to have their way with them? And why don't women quickly succumb to them, without the need for all this skill and ingenuity in conquering them? For there is no need to go to war for a castle that is already captured. (...) Therefore, since it is necessary to call on such skill, ingenuity, and effort in order to seduce a woman, whether of high or humble birth, the logical conclusion to draw is that women are by no means as fickle as some men claim, or as easily influenced in their behaviour. And if anyone tells me that books are full of women like these, it is this very reply, frequently given, which causes me to complain. My response is that women did not write these books nor include the material which attacks them and their morals. Those who plead their cause in the absence of an opponent can invent to their heart's content, can pontificate without taking into account the opposite point of view and keep the best arguments for themselves, for aggressors are always quick to attack those who have no means of defence. But if women had written these books, I know full well the subject would have been handled differently. They know that they stand wrongfully accused, and that the cake has not been divided up equally, for the strongest take the lion's share, and the one who does the sharing out keeps the biggest portion for himself.”

MenWomenBooksMoralityPerceptionPrejudiceInjusticeGenderInequalityHypocrisyDeceitMisogynySeductionSlanderStereotypesSuppressionSocial NormsUnfairnessDouble StandardsMisrepresentationClichésFicklenessOne SidednessReceived OpinionDefenselessness
Book:Der Sendbrief vom Liebesgott / The Letter of the God of Love
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“It is time to effect a revolution in female manners - time to restore to them their lost dignity - and make them, as a part of the human species, labour by reforming themselves to reform the world. It is time to separate unchangeable morals from local manners.”

WomenFeminismMoralityEmpowermentDignityGenderReformMannersHypocrisyMisogynyStereotypesSocial NormsDouble StandardsClichés
Book:A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
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“[Y]ou are not ashamed of your sin [in committing adultery] because so many men commit it. Man's wickedness is now such that men are more ashamed of chastity than of lechery. Murderers, thieves, perjurers, false witnesses, plunderers and fraudsters are detested and hated by people generally, but whoever will sleep with his servant girl in brazen lechery is liked and admired for it, and people make light of the damage to his soul. And if any man has the nerve to say that he is chaste and faithful to his wife and this gets known, he is ashamed to mix with other men, whose behaviour is not like his, for they will mock him and despise him and say he's not a real man; for man's wickedness is now of such proportions that no one is considered a man unless he is overcome by lechery, while one who overcomes lechery and stays chaste is considered unmanly.”

MenWomenPerceptionGenderHypocrisyMisogynyManhoodAdulteryFidelityImmoralitySocial NormsDouble StandardsManlinessPromiscuityClichésCrimes
Book:Sermons 1-19 (Vol. III/1)
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“Now, it is frequently asserted that, with women, the job does not come first. What (people cry) are women doing with this liberty of theirs? What woman really prefers a job to a home and family? Very few, I admit. It is unfortunate that they should so often have to make the choice. A man does not, as a rule, have to choose. He gets both. Nevertheless, there have been women ... who had the choice, and chose the job and made a success of it. And there have been and are many men who have sacrificed their careers for women ... When it comes to a choice, then every man or woman has to choose as an individual human being, and, like a human being, take the consequences.”

WomenFreedomFeminismEmpowermentGenderInequalityChoiceSelf DeterminationMisogynyCareerStereotypesDouble StandardsClichés
Book:Are Women Human? Penetrating, Sensible and Witty Essays on the Role of Women in Society
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“My Lady, you certainly tell me about wonderful constancy, strength and virtue and firmness of women, so can one say the same thing about men? (...) Response [by Lady Rectitude]: "Fair sweet friend, have you not yet heard the saying that the fool sees well enough a small cut in the face of his neighbour, but he disregards the great gaping one above his own eye? I will show you the great contradiction in what the men say about the changeability and inconstancy of women. It is true that they all generally insist that women are very frail [= fickle] by nature. And since they accuse women of frailty, one would suppose that they themselves take care to maintain a reputation for constancy, or at the very least, that the women are indeed less so than they are themselves. And yet, it is obvious that they demand of women greater constancy than they themselves have, for they who claim to be of this strong and noble condition cannot refrain from a whole number of very great defects and sins, and not out of ignorance, either, but out of pure malice, knowing well how badly they are misbehaving. But all this they excuse in themselves and say that it is in the nature of man to sin, yet if it so happens that any women stray into any misdeed (of which they themselves are the cause by their great power and longhandedness), then it's suddenly all frailty and inconstancy, they claim. But it seems to me that since they do call women frail, they should not support that frailty, and not ascribe to them as a great crime what in themselves they merely consider a little defect.”

MenWomenSinVirtueFeminismMoralityEmpowermentPrejudiceGenderInequalityHypocrisyMisogynySlanderStereotypesStrength Of CharacterFrailtyConstancySocial NormsPreconceptionsFirmnessDouble StandardsViceClichés
Book:The Book of the City of Ladies
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“[I]f you seek in every way to minimise my firm beliefs by your anti-feminist attacks, please recall that a small dagger or knife point can pierce a great, bulging sack and that a small fly can attack a great lion and speedily put him to flight.”

MenWomenFeminismSelf EsteemDignityPrejudiceGenderWitHypocrisyMisogynyBeliefsSlanderStereotypesPreconceptionsDouble StandardsInsultsClichésConvictionsReparteeSelf ImportanceAttacks
Book:Le Débat Sur Le Roman De La Rose
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“[S]ince you are angry at me without reason, you attack me harshly with, "Oh outrageous presumption! Oh excessively foolish pride! Oh opinion uttered too quickly and thoughtlessly by the mouth of a woman! A woman who condemns a man of high understanding and dedicated study, a man who, by great labour and mature deliberation, has made the very noble book of the Rose, which surpasses all others that were ever written in French. When you have read this book a hundred times, provided you have understood the greater part of it, you will discover that you could never have put your time and intellect to better use!" My answer: Oh man deceived by willful opinion! I could assuredly answer but I prefer not to do it with insult, although, groundlessly, you yourself slander me with ugly accusations. Oh darkened understanding! Oh perverted knowledge ... A simple little housewife sustained by the doctrine of Holy Church could criticise your error!”

MenWomenFeminismSelf EsteemDignityPrejudiceGenderWitHypocrisyMisogynyBeliefsSlanderStereotypesPreconceptionsDouble StandardsInsultsClichésConvictionsReparteeSelf ImportanceAttacks
Book:Le Débat Sur Le Roman De La Rose
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“[J]ust the sight of this book, even though it was of no authority, made me wonder how it happened that so many different men – and learned men among them – have been and are so inclined to express both in speaking and in their treatises and writings so many wicked insults about women and their behaviour. Not only one or two ... but, more generally, from the treatises of all philosophers and poets and from all the orators – it would take too long to mention their names – it seems that they all speak from one and the same mouth. Thinking deeply about these matters, I began to examine my character and conduct as a natural woman and, similarly, I considered other women whose company I frequently kept, princesses, great ladies, women of the middle and lower classes, who had graciously told me of their most private and intimate thoughts, hoping that I could judge impartially and in good conscience whether the testimony of so many notable men could be true. To the best of my knowledge, no matter how long I confronted or dissected the problem, I could not see or realise how their claims could be true when compared to the natural behaviour and character of women.”

MenCharacterWomenFeminismBooksMoralityExpectationsEmpowermentPrejudiceGenderInequalityHypocrisyBehaviourMisogynySlanderStereotypesSocial NormsReality CheckPreconceptionsDouble StandardsInsultsConductImpartialityClichés
Book:The Book of the City of Ladies
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“[Women] complain about many clerks who attribute all sorts of faults to them and who compose works about them in rhyme, prose, and verse, criticizing their conduct in a variety of different ways. They then give these works as elementary textbooks to their young pupils at the beginning of their schooling, to provide them with exempla and received wisdom, so that they will remember this teaching when they come of age ... They accuse [women] of many ... serious vice[s] and are very critical of them, finding no excuse for them whatsoever. This is the way clerks behave day and night, composing their verse now in French, now in Latin. And they base their opinions on goodness only knows which books, which are more mendacious than a drunk. Ovid, in a book he wrote called Cures for Love, says many evil things about women, and I think he was wrong to do this. He accuses them of gross immorality, of filthy, vile, and wicked behaviour. (I disagree with him that they have such vices and promise to champion them in the fight against anyone who would like to throw down the gauntlet ...) Thus, clerks have studied this book since their early childhood as their grammar primer and then teach it to others so that no man will undertake to love a woman.”

MenLoveWomenTeachingBooksMoralityPerceptionEmpowermentPrejudiceGenderHypocrisyInstructionFalsehoodMisogynySlanderStereotypesSocial NormsDouble StandardsMisrepresentationClichésReceived Opinion
Book:Der Sendbrief vom Liebesgott / The Letter of the God of Love
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“Most real-world villains do not really see themselves as villains, and they despise heroes generally because they do not recognize heroes. An evil man assumes that anyone willing to do the right thing is no less rotten on the inside than he, and that there is always some ulterior motive. He hates the righteous man not because he hates righteousness, but because he knows only how to project ill will.”

EvilHypocrisyHeroesProjectionSelf RighteousnessVillainsDouble StandardsIll WillPsychological ProjectionUlterior Motives
Author:Criss Jami
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“And you don't give a damn for Israel's welfare—admit it! You don't give a damn about their security—go on, admit it! All that matters to you is your scoop, and the boss's congratulations, and if that piece brought you a Pulitzer Prize you jump for joy, and if Israel had to suffer for it, what the hell! Do I overstate the case?” “Yes, you overstate the case, damn right you overstate it! I love my work. I love it passionately, And not because of the rewards but because it's my weapon! I like to think that because of me men and women will be a little happier and their lives a little easier.” “You worry about everybody in the world except your own brothers and sisters in Israel!” “That's a lie!” “Then prove it!” “How do you want me to prove it? By concealing what happens there? By accepting Injustice there and passing over it in silence?” “And the injustices perpetrated against Israel? You don't care about them? The terrorist raids? The assassination of children? The murder of innocent civilians? “The paper we work for talks about them all the time, and often on the front page. Don't you think the Palestinians’ fate deserves a little attention too?” “Ah, there it is—finally admitting it's the Palestinians you care about.” “No. It's the truth I care about. And I love Israel as much as you do.” “But you're prepared to do them harm and put them at risk.” “No! I'm prepared to keep them from doing harm to themselves!” “Oh, magnificent, Tamar! You're going to help Israel in spite of itself! Bravo!”

TruthSilenceInjusticeIsraelPalestineJewishDouble StandardsPalestinians
Book:The Forgotten
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“Whites impose these rules on themselves because they know blacks, in particular, are so quick to take offense. Radio host Dennis Prager was surprised to learn that a firm that runs focus groups on radio talk shows excludes blacks from such groups. It had discovered that almost no whites are willing to disagree with a black. As soon as a black person voiced an opinion, whites agreed, whatever they really thought. When Mr. Prager asked his listening audience about this, whites called in from around the country to say they were afraid to disagree with a black person for fear of being thought racist. Attempts at sensitivity can go wrong. In 2009, there were complaints from minority staff in the Delaware Department of Transportation about insensitive language, so the department head, Carolann Wicks, distributed a newsletter describing behavior and language she considered unacceptable. Minorities were so offended that the newsletter spelled out the words whites were not supposed to use that the department had to recall and destroy the newsletter. The effort whites put into observing racial etiquette has been demonstrated in the laboratory. In experiments at Tufts University and Harvard Business School, a white subject was paired with a partner, and each was given 30 photographs of faces that varied by race, sex, and background color. They were then supposed to identify one of the 30 faces by asking as few yes-or-no questions as possible. Asking about race was clearly a good way to narrow down the possibilities —whites did not hesitate to use that strategy when their partner was white—but only 10 percent could bring themselves to mention race if their partner was black. They were afraid to admit that they even noticed race. When the same experiment was done with children, even white 10- and 11-year olds avoided mentioning race, though younger children were less inhibited. Because they were afraid to identify people by race if the partner was black, older children performed worse on the test than younger children. “This result is fascinating because it shows that children as young as 10 feel the need to try to avoid appearing prejudiced, even if doing so leads them to perform poorly on a basic cognitive test,” said Kristin Pauker, a PhD candidate at Tufts who co-authored the study. During Barack Obama’s campaign for President, Duke University sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva asked the white students in his class to raise their hands if they had a black friend on campus. All did so. At the time, blacks were about 10 percent of the student body, so for every white to have a black friend, every black must have had an average of eight or nine white friends. However, when Prof. Bonilla-Silva asked the blacks in the class if they had white friends none raised his hand. One hesitates to say the whites were lying, but there would be deep disapproval of any who admitted to having no black friends, whereas there was no pressure on blacks to claim they had white friends. Nor is there the same pressure on blacks when they talk insultingly about whites. Claire Mack is a former mayor and city council member of San Mateo, California. In a 2006 newspaper interview, she complained that too many guests on television talk shows were “wrinkled-ass white men.” No one asked her to apologize. Daisy Lynum, a black commissioner of the city of Orlando, Florida, angered the city’s police when she complained that a “white boy” officer had pulled her son over for a traffic stop. She refused to apologize, saying, “That is how I talk and I don’t plan to change.” During his 2002 reelection campaign, Sharpe James, mayor of Newark, New Jersey, referred to his light-skinned black opponent as “the faggot white boy.” This caused no ripples, and a majority-black electorate returned him to office.”

RaceEducationDiversityDouble StandardsStudies
Book:White Identity: Racial Consciousness in the 21st Century
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“Other people -- and by other people, I mean men -- were afforded that freedom. Male rockers were rolling in late to awards shows and we thought it made them cooler. Male pop stars were sleeping with lots of women and that was awesome. Kevin was leaving me alone with two babies when he wanted to go smoke pot and record a rap song, "Popozão," slang for big ass in Portuguese. Then he took them away from me, and he had Details magazine calling him Dad of the Year. A paparazzo who stalked and tormented me for months sued me for $230,000 for running over his foot with my car one time when I was trying to escape from him. We settled and and I had to give him a lot of money. When Justin cheated on me and then acted sexy, it was seen as cute. But when I wore a sparkly bodysuit, I had Diane Sawyer making me cry on national television, MTV making me listen to people criticizing my costumes, and a governor's wife saying she wanted to shoot me.”

MenFeminismMemoirDouble Standards
Book:The Woman in Me
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“We could choose to celebrate our differences, rather than over-analyze them. This might help us become more realistic about the generalizations to which we subscribe. For example, consider this. If women are the overemotional ones, why do so many bar fights break out between men? Such brawls do not spring from logical, calm places.”

MenWomenDifferencesEmotionalEmotionsFightStereotypesDouble Standards
Book:The Bimbo Has Brains: And Other Freaky Facts
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“Sadly, the signals that allow men and women to find the partners who most please them are scrambled by the sexual insecurity initiated by beauty thinking. A woman who is self-conscious can't relax to let her sensuality come into play. If she is hungry she will be tense. If she is "done up" she will be on the alert for her reflection in his eyes. If she is ashamed of her body, its movement will be stilled. If she does not feel entitled to claim attention, she will not demand that airspace to shine in. If his field of vision has been boxed in by "beauty"--a box continually shrinking--he simply will not see her, his real love, standing right before him.”

CultureBeautySocietyFeminismSelf EsteemMarketingEqualitySexualityAdvertisingMagazinesBody ImageCosmeticsPlastic SurgeryDouble StandardsObjectificationImagesMass CultureCosmetic SurgeryDiet Industry
Book:The Beauty Myth
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“Men are visually aroused by women's bodies and less sensitive to their arousal by women's personalities because they are trained early into that response, while women are less visually aroused and more emotionally aroused because that is their training. This asymmetry in sexual education maintains men's power in the myth: They look at women's bodies, evaluate, move on; their own bodies are not looked at, evaluated, and taken or passed over. But there is no "rock called gender" responsible for that; it can change so that real mutuality--an equal gaze, equal vulnerability, equal desire--brings heterosexual men and women together.”

CultureBeautySocietyFeminismSelf EsteemAgingMarketingEqualitySexualityAdvertisingMagazinesPornographyBody ImageEating DisordersCosmeticsPlastic SurgeryFashion IndustryDouble StandardsObjectificationImagesMass CultureCosmetic SurgeryDiet Industry
Book:The Beauty Myth
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“A consequence of female self-love is that the woman grows convinced of social worth. Her love for her body will be unqualified, which is the basis of female identification. If a woman loves her own body, she doesn't grudge what other women do with theirs; if she loves femaleness, she champions its rights. It's true what they say about women: Women are insatiable. We are greedy. Our appetites do need to be controlled if things are to stay in place. If the world were ours too, if we believed we could get away with it, we would ask for more love, more sex, more money, more commitment to children, more food, more care. These sexual, emotional, and physical demands would begin to extend to social demands: payment for care of the elderly, parental leave, childcare, etc. The force of female desire would be so great that society would truly have to reckon with what women want, in bed and in the world.”

CultureBeautySocietyFeminismSelf EsteemSelf LoveAgingMarketingEqualitySexualityAdvertisingMagazinesPornographyBody ImageEating DisordersCosmeticsPlastic SurgeryFashion IndustryDouble StandardsObjectificationSexual ViolenceImagesMass CultureCosmetic SurgeryDiet Industry
Book:The Beauty Myth
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“Whatever is deeply, essentially female--the life in a woman's expression, the feel of her flesh, the shape of her breasts, the transformations after childbirth of her skin--is being reclassified as ugly, and ugliness as disease. These qualities are about an intensification of female power, which explains why they are being recast as a diminution of power. At least a third of a woman's life is marked with aging; about a third of her body is made of fat. Both symbols are being transformed into operable condition--so that women will only feel healthy if we are two thirds of the women we could be. How can an "ideal" be about women if it is defined as how much of a female sexual characteristic does not exist on the woman's body, and how much of a female life does not show on her face?”

CultureBeautySocietyFeminismSelf EsteemAgingMarketingEqualitySexualityAdvertisingMagazinesBody ImageCosmeticsPlastic SurgeryFashion IndustryDouble StandardsObjectificationImagesMass CultureCosmetic SurgeryDiet Industry
Book:The Beauty Myth
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“Women could probably be trained quite easily to see men first as sexual things. If girls never experienced sexual violence; if a girl's only window on male sexuality were a stream of easily available, well-lit, cheap images of boys slightly older than herself, in their late teens, smiling encouragingly and revealing cuddly erect penises the color of roses or mocha, she might well look at, masturbate to, and, as an adult, "need" beauty pornography based on the bodies of men. And if those initiating penises were represented to the girl as pneumatically erectible, swerving neither left nor right, tasting of cinnamon or forest berries, innocent of random hairs, and ever ready; if they were presented alongside their measurements, length, and circumference to the quarter inch; if they seemed to be available to her with no troublesome personality attached; if her sweet pleasure seemed to be the only reason for them to exist--then a real young man would probably approach the young woman's bed with, to say the least, a failing heart.”

CultureBeautySocietyFeminismSelf EsteemAgingMarketingEqualitySexualityAdvertisingMagazinesPornographyBody ImageEating DisordersCosmeticsPlastic SurgeryFashion IndustryDouble StandardsObjectificationSexual ViolenceImagesMass CultureCosmetic SurgeryDiet Industry
Book:The Beauty Myth
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“A man is unlikely to be brought within earshot of women as they judge men's appearance, height, muscle tone, sexual technique, penis size, personal grooming, or taste in clothes--all of which we do. The fact is that women are able to view men just as men view women, as objects for sexual and aesthetic evaluation; we too are effortlessly able to choose the male "ideal" from a lineup and if we could have male beauty as well as everything else, most of us would not say no. But so what? Given all that, women make the choice, by and large, to take men as human beings first.”

CultureBeautySocietyFeminismSelf EsteemAgingMarketingEqualitySexualityAdvertisingMagazinesPornographyBody ImageCosmeticsPlastic SurgeryFashion IndustryDouble StandardsObjectificationSexual ViolenceImagesMass CultureCosmetic SurgeryDiet Industry
Book:The Beauty Myth
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“Men who read it [beauty pornography] don't do so because they want women who look like that. The attraction of what they are holding is that it is not a woman, but a two-dimensional woman-shaped blank. The appeal of the material is not the fantasy that the model will come to life; it is precisely that she will not, ever. Her coming to life would ruin the vision. It is not about life. Ideal beauty is ideal because it does not exist; The action lies in the gap between desire and gratification. Women are not perfect beauties without distance. That space, in a consumer culture, is a lucrative one. The beauty myth moves for men as a mirage, its power lies in its ever-receding nature. When the gap is closed, the lover embraces only his own disillusion.”

CultureBeautySocietyFeminismSelf EsteemMarketingEqualitySexualityAdvertisingMagazinesPornographyBody ImageCosmeticsPlastic SurgeryDouble StandardsObjectificationImagesMass CultureCosmetic SurgeryDiet IndustryConsumer
Book:The Beauty Myth
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“We do not have to spend money and go hungry and struggle and study to become sensual; we always were. We need not believe we must somehow earn good erotic care; we always deserved it. Femaleness and its sexuality are beautiful. Women have long secretly suspected as much. In that sexuality, women are physically beautiful already; superb; breathtaking. Many, many men see this way too. A man who wants to define himself as a real lover of women admires what shows of her past on a woman's face, before she ever saw him, and the adventures and stresses that her body has undergone, the scars of trauma, the changes of childbirth, her distinguishing characteristics, the light is her expression. The number of men who already see in this way is far greater than the arbiters of mass culture would lead us to believe, since the story they need to tell ends with the opposite moral.”

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Book:The Beauty Myth
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“The beauty myth sets it up this way: A high rating as an art object is the most valuable tribute a woman can exact from her lover. If he appreciates her face and body because it is hers, that is next to worthless. It is very neat: The myth contrives to make women offend men by scrutinizing honest appreciation when they give it; it can make men offend women merely by giving them honest appreciation. It can manage to contaminate the sentence "You're beautiful," which is next to "I love you" in expressing a bond of regard between a woman and a man. A man cannot tell a woman that he loves to look at her without risking making her unhappy. If he never tells her, she is destined to be unhappy. And the "luckiest" woman of all, told she is loved because she's "beautiful," is often tormented because she lacks the security of being desired because she looks like who she lovably is.”

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Book:The Beauty Myth
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“Our society does reward beauty on the outside over health on the inside. Women must not be blamed for choosing short-term beauty "fixes" that harm our long-term health, since our life spans are inverted under the beauty myth, and there is no great social or economic incentive for women to live a long time. A thin young woman with precancerous lungs [who smokes to stay thin] is more highly rewarded socially that a hearty old crone. Spokespeople sell women the Iron Maiden [an intrinsically unattainable standard of beauty used to punish women for their failure to achieve and conform to it]and name her "Health": if public discourse were really concerned with women's health, it would turn angrily upon this aspect of the beauty myth.”

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Book:The Beauty Myth
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“Why should her lover, just because he is male, be in a position to judge her against other women? Why must she need to know her position and hate needing to, and hate knowing? Why should his reply have such exaggerated power? And it does. He does not know that what he says will affect the way she feels when they next make love. She is angry for a number of good reasons that may have nothing to do with this particular man's intentions. The exchange reminds her that, in spite of a whole fabric of carefully woven equalities, they are not equal in this way that is so crucial that its snagged thread unravels the rest.”

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Book:The Beauty Myth
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“Their [girls] sexual energy, their evaluation of adolescent boys and other girls goes thwarted, deflected back upon the girls, unspoken, and their searching hungry gazed returned to their own bodies. The questions, Whom do I desire? Why? What will I do about it? are turned around: Would I desire myself? Why?...Why not? What can I do about it? The books and films they see survey from the young boy's point of view his first touch of a girl's thighs, his first glimpse of her breasts. The girls sit listening, absorbing, their familiar breasts estranged as if they were not part of their bodies, their thighs crossed self-consciously, learning how to leave their bodies and watch them from the outside. Since their bodies are seen from the point of view of strangeness and desire, it is no wonder that what should be familiar, felt to be whole, become estranged and divided into parts. What little girls learn is not the desire for the other, but the desire to be desired. Girls learn to watch their sex along with the boys; that takes up the space that should be devoted to finding out about what they are wanting, and reading and writing about it, seeking it and getting it. Sex is held hostage by beauty and its ransom terms are engraved in girls' minds early and deeply with instruments more beautiful that those which advertisers or pornographers know how to use: literature, poetry, painting, and film. This outside-in perspective on their own sexuality leads to the confusion that is at the heart of the myth. Women come to confuse sexual looking with being looked at sexually ("Clairol...it's the look you want"); many confuse sexually feeling with being sexually felt ("Gillete razors...the way a woman wants to feel"); many confuse desiring with being desirable. "My first sexual memory," a woman tells me, "was when I first shaved my legs, and when I ran my hand down the smooth skin I felt how it would feel to someone else's hand." Women say that when they lost weight they "feel sexier" but the nerve endings in the clitoris and nipples don't multiply with weight loss. Women tell me they're jealous of the men who get so much pleasure out of the female body that they imagine being inside the male body that is inside their own so that they can vicariously experience desire. Could it be then that women's famous slowness of arousal to men's, complex fantasy life, the lack of pleasure many experience in intercourse, is related to this cultural negation of sexual imagery that affirms the female point of view, the culture prohibition against seeing men's bodies as instruments of pleasure? Could it be related to the taboo against representing intercourse as an opportunity for a straight woman actively to pursue, grasp, savor, and consume the male body for her satisfaction, as much as she is pursued, grasped, savored, and consumed for his?”

CultureBeautySocietyFeminismSelf EsteemMarketingEqualitySexualityAdvertisingMagazinesBody ImageCosmeticsPlastic SurgeryFashion IndustryDouble StandardsObjectificationImagesMass CultureCosmetic SurgeryDiet Industry
Book:The Beauty Myth
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“Young women today feel vulnerable to judgment; if a harsh sentence is passed (or even suspected or projected), it is not her reputation that suffers so much as the stability of her moral universe. They did not have long to explore the sexual revolution and make it their own. Before the old chains had grown cold, while young women were still rubbing the circulation back into their ankles and taking tentative steps forward, the beauty industries levied a heavy toll on further investigations, and beauty pornography offered them designer bondage.”

CultureBeautySocietyFeminismSelf EsteemAgingMarketingEqualitySexualityAdvertisingMagazinesPornographyBody ImageEating DisordersCosmeticsPlastic SurgeryFashion IndustryDouble StandardsObjectificationImagesMass CultureCosmetic SurgeryDiet Industry
Book:The Beauty Myth
Create image