Going through a tough time? Whether it's due to finances, finals or personal drama, one of my favorite sources for relaxation and reflection is read some of my favorite quotes from some of my favorite feminist scholars and artists (and a celebrity or two.) Feminism is about so much more than female identity, and all of these quotes touch on so many different important topics, like intersectionality, body positivity, and being a good/productive/generous human being in general. Enjoy!
1. "I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood." —Audre Lorde
2. "I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely. No one knows me or loves me completely. I have only myself” —Simone de Beauvoir
3. "Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked 'female.'" —Diana Vreeland
Full quote: "You Don’t Have to Be Pretty. You don’t owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don’t owe it to your mother, you don’t owe it to your children, you don’t owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked “female”.
4. “I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat, or a prostitute.” —Rebecca West
5. “We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful. Otherwise, you would threaten the man.” —Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Full quote (I'm pretty sure Beyoncé has familiarized everyone with this one) : “We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful. Otherwise, you would threaten the man. Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. Now marriage can be a source of joy and love and mutual support but why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage and we don’t teach boys the same? We raise girls to see each other as competitors not for jobs or accomplishments, which I think can be a good thing, but for the attention of men. We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are.”
6. “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.” —Audre Lorde
7. “It's difficult to see the glass ceiling because it's made of glass. Virtually invisible. What we need is for more birds to fly above it and shit all over it, so we can see it properly.” —Caitlin Moran
8. “A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.” —Naomi Wolf
9. "Bitches get stuff done." —Tina Fey
10. “Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.” —Gloria Steinem
11. “I'm not going to limit myself just because people won't accept the fact that I can do something else.” —Dolly Parton
12. “If any female feels she needs anything beyond herself to legitimate and validate her existence, she is already giving away her power to be self-defining, her agency.” —bell hooks
13. “Why on earth have I, because I'm a woman, got to be nice to everyone?” —Caitlin Moran
14. “There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.” —Audre Lorde
15. “Empathy is the most radical of human emotions.” —Gloria Steinem
I hope any/all of these quotes may one day help you out the same way they have for me.
