The ‘feminine’ woman is forever static and childlike. She is like the ballerina in an old-fashioned music box, her unchanging features tiny and girlish, her voice tinkly, her body stuck on a pin, rotating in a spiral that will never grow.
Feminism’s agenda is basic: It asks that women not be forced to ‘choose’ between public justice and private happiness.
In place of equal respect, the nation offered women the Miss America beauty pageant, established in 1920-the same year women won the vote.
The culture used to move relatively slowly, so you could take aim. Now it moves so fast, and is so fluffy and meaningless, you feel like an idiot even complaining about it.
The system of heroism depends on women to be weak so men can be strong.
Divorced men are more likely to meet their car payments than their child support obligations.
Keeping the peace with the particular man in one’s life becomes more essential than battling the mass male culture.
What happened with Hurricane Katrina was the American electorate was forced to look at what lay behind the veneer of chest-beating. We all saw the consequences of having terrible government leadership.
Social scientists could supply plenty of research to show that one member of the family, at least, is happier and more well adjusted when mum stays home and looks after the children. But that person is dada finding of limited use to backlash publicists.
My goal is to be accused of being strident.
Self-esteem is the basis for feminism because self-esteem is based on defining yourself and believing in that definition. Self-esteem is regarding yourself as a grown-up.
The demand that women “return to femininity” is a demand that the cultural gears shift into reverse, that we back up to a fabled time when everyone was richer, younger, more powerful.
The women’s movement hit my neighborhood like a freight train. Everybody got divorced. You wonder what would have happened to women if the suburbs hadn’t been built.
A backlash against women’s rights is nothing new. Indeed it’s a recurring phenomenon: it returns every time women begin to make some headway towards equality, a seemingly inevitable early frost to the brief flowerings of feminism.
When the enemy has no face, society will invent one.
That so-called feminine ardor for clothes shopping had been flagging for some time. Between 1980 and 1986, at the same time that women were buying more houses, cars, restaurant dinners, and health care services, they were buying fewer pieces of clothing-from dresses to underwear.
As women began to challenge their own internalized views of a woman’s proper place, their desire and demand for equal status and free choice began to grow exponentially.
Women who had discovered pants, low-heeled shoes, and loose sweaters during World War II were reluctant to give them up in peacetime.