„The worst thing in the world is not being able to make a problem go away for one’s child.“
© 2019 Lisa Taddeo, Three women.
The worst!
Tag: Rosa
Instant demotions
”I have lost count of the number of times men, both older and younger than me, have told me that I look young. They act like it’s a compliment, but it is so not a compliment. Women are meant to be flattered by being told we look young because, for a woman, looks are the most important thing, and youth is the best look of all. But in informing me that I look youthful, or that I don’t understand because I’m too naïve, or asking me if I’m a student when I am clearly a tenured lecturer, these men strip from me more than a decade of professional experience and expertise. The so-called compliment is, in fact, an instant demotion.”
© 2018 Emilie Pine, Notes to self.
Pointless judgements
”When I look at women—whether they’re dancing naked onstage, or they’re in a magazine wearing a bikini—I do not really care if they are smooth or hairy. I do not care about their bodies and what they do with them. I do not care if they think hair is unsightly or unsexy. Because I am not really judging them, I am judging myself. I judge myself for not sufficiently grooming my pubic hair. I judge myself for not shaving my legs as often as I could. I judge myself for not shaving my underarms at all. I judge myself all the time. And this constant act of judgment is the most pointless thing I have ever done.”
© 2018 Emilie Pine, Notes to self.
Boring old gender wars
“My houseguest, the brilliant theorist and activist Marina Sitrin, insisted that I had to write it down because people like her younger sister Sam needed to read it. Young women, she said, needed to know that being belittled wasn’t the result of their own secret failings; it was the boring old gender wars, and it happened to most of us who were female at some point or other.”
© 2014 Rebecca Solnit, Men explain things to me.
Writer's Debris 