Female authority is still associated with childhood, and the last time a lot of powerful guys saw a powerful woman they were eight, and they feel regressed to childhood by a powerful woman in a way that they don’t feel with a man.”
— Gloria Steinem, on why there aren’t more women in power. (via cheatsheet)
(via newsweek)
To be a strong woman, to be a fierce woman, to be a true woman, to be a leader, to be truly powerful, you have to get to place where you can tolerate people not liking you. And know that when you actually do that, you have to fall back on your own moral imperative in your own moral trunk and say, ‘I don’t care, this is what I believe. This is who I am.’”
— Eve Ensler, Beautiful Daughters (via sociallyconstructed)
(via vonnegutesque)
Well played, Nike.
Whitney Houston, on being a woman in a man’s world:
“I like being a woman, even in a man’s world. After all, men can’t wear dresses, but we can wear the pants.”
(via thefrisky)
Meryl Streep, on bravery and female role models:
“For instance,’ [Meryl Streep] says, forking at a bread-crumbed oyster, ‘we are taught about Benedict Arnold, the first traitor in America, but I’ve never heard—until I went onto the [National Women’s History Museum] Web site—about Deborah Sampson, the first woman to take a bullet for her nation. She was 21 years old in the Revolutionary War. She enlisted on the American side under a man’s name, wore boys’ clothing, was cut with a British saber across her forehead, and took a musket ball in her thigh.’ She’s a good storyteller, with a warm, urgent voice. ‘And her compatriots carried her six miles to the doctor’s, and he stitched up her head and she wouldn’t let him take her pants off—because he would discover she was a woman!’ So did she die of her wound? ‘No—she was very good with her needle, so she cut the musket ball out and sewed her own leg up and served another eighteen months. In 1783 she was discharged, went home and had three children.’ Sampson was granted £34 by the state of Massachusetts for exhibiting ‘an extraordinary instance of feminine heroism by discharging the duties of a faithful, gallant soldier, and at the same time preserving the virtue and chastity of her sex unsuspected and unblemished.’ Amazing story. ‘And I am 60 years old and I learn this story,’ says Streep. ‘I should have learned that story in the fourth grade. Because it helps you as a child to know that it is not just Paul Revere riding a horse and calling, ‘The British are coming, the British are coming.’ It’s not just Benjamin Franklin and George Washington and the battles won, it’s the bravery of all these people that are undiscovered, unknown.”
Jayne Mansfield, on sex appeal:
“Sex appeal is a wonderful, warm, womanly, healthy feeling. If you’re a woman it’s womanly, if you’re not it’s manly…it comes only from inside…it’s an effervescent desire to enjoy life.”
Coco Chanel, on being courageous:
“The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.”
Mindy Kaling, on not worrying about being popular:
“Teenage girls, please don’t worry about being super popular in high school, or being the best actress in high school, or the best athlete. Not only do people not care about any of that the second you graduate, but when you get older, if you reference your successes in high school too much, it actually makes you look kind of pitiful, like some babbling old Tennessee Williams character with nothing else going on in her current life. What I’ve noticed is that almost no one who was a big star in high school is also a big star later in life. For us overlooked kids, it’s so wonderfully fair.”
Amy Poehler, on eating breakfast for dinner (and what she’s learned from Leslie Knope):
“Protect your friends. You only have one hometown. If you think you’ve had a bad date, remember, it can always get worse. And it’s okay to eat breakfast for dinner.”
