Femininity Quotes - page 2

But she [Virginia Woolf] is impotently distant from an understanding of the proper relations between literature and society, because she has no clear sense of the functions of literature. She sees writers as individual 'artists' working in mysterious privacy - which from time to time society rudely invades. Her writer, indeed, has all the characteristics of traditional 'femininity' - with society as the big strong male who should protect and cherish his literary womenfolk, but does not. She might - for all the application of her complaint to the relations between society and literature - be talking of the relations between husbands and wives. (Laura Riding)
The woman who thinks she can choose femininity, can toy with it like the social drinker toys with wine - well, she's asking for it, asking to be undone, devoured, asking to spend her life perpetrating a new fraud, manufacturing a new fake identity, only this time it's her equality that's fake. View quote
Rachel Cusk
If, then, one should try to sum up the character of women's fiction at the present moment, one would say that it is courageous; it is sincere; it keeps closely to what women feel. It is not bitter. It does not insist upon its femininity. View quote
Virginia Woolf
The thing women must do to rise to power is to redefine their femininity. Once, power was considered a masculine attribute. In fact power has no sex. View quote
Katharine Graham
Beauty and femininity are ageless and can't be contrived, and glamour, although the manufacturers won't like this, cannot be manufactured. Not real glamour; it's based on femininity. View quote
Marilyn Monroe
To the "masculists" of both sexes, "femininity" implies all that men have built into the female image in the past few centuries: weakness, imbecility, dependence, masochism, unreliability, and a certain "babydoll" sexuality that is actually only a projection of male dreams. To the "feminist" of both sexes, femininity is synonymous with the eternal female principle, connoting strength, integrity, wisdom, justice, dependability, and a psychic power foreign and therefore dangerous to the plodding masculists of both sexes. View quote
Elizabeth Gould Davis
The misnamed "feminine" woman, so admired by her creator, man - the woman who is acquiescent in her inferiority and who has swallowed man's image of her as his ordained helpmate and no more - is in reality the "masculine" woman. The truly feminine woman "cannot help burning with that inner rage that comes from having to identify with her exploiter's negative image of her," and having to conform to her persecutor's idea of femininity and its man-decreed limitations. View quote
Elizabeth Gould Davis
Men insist that they don't mind women succeeding so long as they retain their "femininity". Yet the qualities that men consider "feminine" timidity, submissiveness, obedience, silliness, and self-debasement - are the very qualities best guaranteed to assure the defeat of even the most gifted aspirant. View quote
Elizabeth Gould Davis
Even Plato assumes that the genuinely perfect condition of man means no sex distinction (and how strange this is for people like Feuerbach who are so occupied with affirming sex-differentiation, regarding which they would do best to appeal to paganism). He assumes that originally there was only the masculine (and when there is no thought of femininity, sex-distinction is undifferentiated), but through degeneration and corruption the feminine appeared. He assumes that base and cowardly men became women in death, but he still gives them hope of being elevated again to masculinity. He thinks that in the perfect life the masculine, as originally, will be the only sex, that is, that sex-distinction is a matter of indifference. So it is in Plato, and this, the idea of the state notwithstanding, was the culmination of his philosophy. How much more so, then, the Christian view. View quote
Søren Kierkegaard
Her iron will won international respect. Her unabashed femininity gained women's. Margaret Thatcher was a lady's lady. View quote
Louise Burfitt-Dons
All agree in recognising the fact that females exist in the human species; today as always they make up about one half of humanity. And yet we are told that femininity is in danger; we are exhorted to be women, remain women, become women. It would appear, then, that every female human being is not necessarily a woman; to be so considered she must share in that mysterious and threatened reality known as femininity. (Simone de Beauvoir)
It is important that the female develops a reality that honors and nurtures her femininity and has an identity and creativity of her own. It is equally important that the male in the relationship endorses that creativity. View quote
Stuart Wilde
I enjoy wearing fragrance every day and have found myself searching for the one signature scent that truly reflects my personality and the things I love, such as Bulgarian rose. I have always wanted to create a fragrance from its inception to fruition and articulate femininity, confidence, and fortitude. View quote
Ivanka Trump
I have always admired women that have a strong sense of self, complemented by femininity. I especially appreciate the presence of these women in traditionally male-dominated industries, such as real estate. View quote
Ivanka Trump
If consumer society is to continue to exist in the manner to which it has become accustomed, it is essential that this latent power be appropriated, tamed and made docile. The ways in which contemporary capitalism undermines women's bodies, from advertising to pornography to the structure of gendered labour and domestic conflict, are not private troubles with no bearing upon the wider world. They are necessary fetters in a superstructure of oppression that has become so fundamental to the experience of femininity that it is effectively invisible. This superstructure is vital to the very survival of the patriarchal capitalist machine. If women on earth woke up tomorrow feeling truly positive and powerful in their own bodies, the economies of the globe would collapse overnight. View quote
Laurie Penny
Because I didn't have any queer, lesbian, female role models I hated my own femininity and had to look deep within myself to create an identity that worked for me. Pop culture just doesn't hand us enough variety to choose from. View quote
Beth Ditto
Absolutely, but let me qualify that - I consider myself an authentic feminist. Not as defined by the modern movement. And, let me clarify that a little bit more. I was an English major, so break it down: -ist means one who celebrates. As a feminist, I celebrate my femininity. View quote
Christine O'Donnell
A man can't pass on, like a mother could, an awareness of your body, or sensuality, or what it means to be a woman. I was never taught what femininity was. I learnt it - or rather I invented it - on my own. I tended not to talk at all, if people were staring at me. View quote
Carole Bouquet
The biggest problem that women have is being ambivalent about their own power, ... We should be comfortable with the idea of wielding power. We shouldn't feel that it detracts from our femininity. View quote
Elizabeth Wurtzel
Usually people are questioning my athleticism more than my femininity! View quote
Gabrielle Reece
Actually, I'm looking forward to being 50. Because to me, that's when a woman is at the pinnacle of her femininity and her womanhood. (Helen McCrory)
Woman suffrage is an unjust, unreasonable, unspiritual abnormality. It is a hard, undigested, tasteless, devitalized proposition. It is a half-fledged, unmusical, Promethean abomination. It is a quack bolus to reduce masculinity even by the obliteration of femininity. View quote
John Boyle O'Reilly
I do think anger is so difficult for women. Girls think it undermines their femininity; it's not very ladylike. View quote
Koren Zailckas
I really want women to throw their shoulders back and stand up straight and use their big girl voices and not feel like they're compromising their femininity to be strong and smart. View quote
Katie Aselton
Most people compliment me on maintaining my femininity while I'm on the court. People like the fact that I model. My fans or little girls always say they want to play sports, but also want to be a model like me and I think that's great. View quote
Lisa Leslie