"So, you see, I write to no purpose. I write as it seems to me one has to write. For nothing. I don’t even write for women. I write about women in order to write about myself, about myself alone through the ages."
— Marguerite Duras, “House and Home” (from Practicalities)
"[Publishers Weekly: I wouldn’t want to be friends with Nora, would you? Her outlook is almost unbearably grim.]
For heaven’s sake, what kind of question is that? Would you want to be friends with Humbert Humbert? Would you want to be friends with Mickey Sabbath? Saleem Sinai? Hamlet? Krapp? Oedipus? Oscar Wao? Antigone? Raskolnikov? Any of the characters in The Corrections? Any of the characters in Infinite Jest? Any of the characters in anything Pynchon has ever written? Or Martin Amis? Or Orhan Pamuk? Or Alice Munro, for that matter? If you’re reading to find friends, you’re in deep trouble. We read to find life, in all its possibilities. The relevant question isn’t ‘is this a potential friend for me?’ but ‘is this character alive?’"
— Claire Messud (via emmaylor)
(via emmaylor)
"This is what sexism does best: it makes you feel crazy for desiring parity and hopeless about ever achieving it."
— Deborah Copaken Kogan, “My So-Called ‘Post-Feminist’ Life in Arts and Letters”
Proverbial Threads by Robbin Ami Silverberg
For the series I chose to focus on text, working with proverbs from cultures around the world that focus on woman’s work. It consists of an open series (over 100) of industrial bobbins, each wrapped with paper threads that have printed on them a repeated proverb about women’s work. Here is a small selection of proverbs:
- “The threaded needle judges the girl.” (Spanish, Argentina)
- “The only skill that women have is turning the spinning wheel.” (Hebrew)
- “A household with a woman is like a flower bed, a household without one like a wasteland.” (Uzbek)
- “A wife is the best piece of furniture.” (Dutch)
- “However smart a woman may be, she will end up in the kitchen.” (Indonesian)
- “Do not humiliate your wife; she is your home.” (Ovambo, Angola/ Namibia)
- “Housewife at home, pancake in honey.” (Russian)
(via likeneelyohara)
Diana Vreeland.
“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”.”
(via compliquees)
Group of girls being sent home from McKinley High School for wearing “dungarees” and “slickers,” 1946, Chicago.
(Source: calumet412, via smartchickscommune)
www.now.org
www.rawa.org
www.womenslaw.org
www.amnestyusa.org
www.globalissues.org
www.globalfundforwomen.orgTo the men who have told me that I’m overreacting and “it’s the 21st century women are equal now”
Ditto.
Note that the “women make only 77.5 cents for every dollar that men earn” statistic applies only to white women. Women of color make significantly less.
- Black women make about $0.68 to a man’s dollar.
- Latina women make about $0.58 to a man’s dollar.
Reblogging again for IWD.
(Source: sydneydiana)
“In 1921, early suffragettes often donned a bathing suit and ate pizza in large groups to annoy men…it was a custom at the time”
PIZZA AND BATHING SUITS
-naomi
"You are rather hard on ‘lady novelists’: or perhaps my corns are tender."
— Virginia Woolf to Roger Fry, 22 September 1924
The Reconstructionists: Celebrating Badass Women
What do Buddhist artist Agnes Martin, Hollywood inventor Hedy Lamarr, and French-Cuban author Anaïs Nin have in common? Their names may not conjure popular recognition, and yet, for Lisa Congdon and Maria Popova, these women represent a particular breed of cultural trailblazer: female, under-appreciated, badass. They are “Reconstructionists,” as the writer-illustrator duo call them — and for the next year, they’ll be celebrated on a blog of the same name. Every Monday for 12 months, The Reconstructionists will debut a hand-painted illustration and short essay highlighting a woman from fields such as art, science, and literature. The subject needn’t be famous, but she will, as Popova, the creator of Brain Pickings, puts it, “have changed the way we define ourselves as a culture.” We spoke with Popova, and illustrator Congdon, about the inspiration behind their project.
How’d you come up with the name ‘Reconstructionist’?
Maria Popova: It’s very challenging to celebrate women without pigeonholing the project into some stereotypical and alienating feminist corner, the most dangerous part of which is the preaching-to-the-choir quality that many such projects tend to have. So when it was time to come up with a title for the project, it couldn’t be something too literal or too obvious. After sifting through hundreds of letters, diaries, autobiographies, and other writing, I suddenly remembered something Anaïs Nin had written in a 1944 diary entry — about “woman’s role in the reconstruction of the world.” It was perfect. It was the only common denominator between those women – they aren’t all artists, or all writers, or all to be expected in the pages of a tenth-grade history book. They are simply all reconstructionists.
Here's a really great defence of Zooey Deschanel by Amanda Hess at Slate
I particularly loved this part:
“I realize now that I never really hated Zooey Deschanel’s feminine performances (it’s hardly rare for a woman in Hollywood to project a feminine image). I hated the way that her femininity had been cast through the lens of male fantasy.”
YES.
Personally, I struggled with a loooooong time with being myself (and I still feel that sometimes I have to defend wearing dresses and liking makeup — it’s very strange) while still portraying myself as a feminist, until I realized:
1) There is no one “right” way to be a feminist, unless you mean believing in equally/having each other’s backs. And in that case, yes. There is a right way.
2) “Rules” about how a feminist “should” dress is like starting a No Homers club. It’s Mean Girls-type bullshit. Why pick apart wardrobe/hair/makeup/etc. etc. when we could all be working together towards something bigger and better? We waste so much time debating whether so-and-so is a feminist or blah blah blah or this and that or painted nails or not painted nails, when in reality, WHO CARES.
Unless you’re painting your nails with anti-feminist sentiment, how does pink nail polish make you less of a feminist? Judging that is like judging someone who doesn’t want to paint their nails: it doesn’t make sense.
The only way to “be a feminist” is to believe in feminist values. Equality. Women’s rights. Sisterhood. Because if we just start nit-picking each other’s shirts and jeans and hair and nails, we’re not only doing a disservice to ourselves or to each other, and we’re wasting valuable time and energy, as well as perpetuating anti-women sentiment — which sucks. You want to dress up in a ball gown? DO IT. You want to wear flannel and shave your head? ROCK ON. Those things don’t matter. What DOES matter is what you believe.
Feminism isn’t supposed to be scary. It’s the opposite, and it’s supposed to be awesome for all of us, men included. “Rules” about how a feminist should look only puts us further within these weird social constraints, and honestly, we are all too smart to fall for those.
So YOU DO YOU, women and men. Because by saying feminists can only look or act a certain way, we’re also saying men can’t be feminists either. And frankly, I also don’t want to associate with/date/get hitched to any man who doesn’t pride himself on being a feminist.
"The Quick Answer goes like this:
Q: How do you write such strong/well-realized/positively portrayed women?
A: I don’t. I write characters. Some of those characters are women."
—
Greg Rucka, “Why I Write “Strong Female Characters”“
It’s not just men who should read this.
(via embfitz)
(via embfitz)
"You may not agree with a woman, but to criticize her appearance — as opposed to her ideas or actions — isn’t doing anyone any favors, least of all you. Insulting a woman’s looks when they have nothing to do with the issue at hand implies a lack of comprehension on your part, an inability to engage in high-level thinking. You may think she’s ugly, but everyone else thinks you’re an idiot."
—
Hillary Clinton (via ceedling)
deal
-naomi
(via rookiemag)
(via rookiemag)
