Stormie Lew

“The rise of the beauty myth was just one of several emerging social fictions that masqueraded as natural components of the feminine sphere, the better to enclose those women inside it. Other such fictions arose contemporaneously: a version of childhood that required continual maternal supervision; a concept of female biology that required middle-class women to act out the roles of hysterics and hypochondriacs; a conviction that respectable women were sexually anesthetic; and a definition of women’s work that occupied them with repetitive, time-consuming, and painstaking tasks such as needlepoint and lacemaking.”
― Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women—a Feminist Critique on Society's Obsession with Flawless Women

“Fitting in is about assessing a situation and becoming who you need to be to be accepted. Belonging, on the other hand, doesn’t require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are.”
― Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection

“The qualities that a given period calls beautiful in women are merely symbols of the female behavior that that period considers desirable: The beauty myth is always actually prescribing behavior and not appearance.”
― Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women—a Feminist Critique on Society's Obsession with Flawless Women

“Societies tell themselves necessary fictions in the same way that individuals and families do. Henrik Ibsen called them “vital lies,” and psychologist Daniel Goleman describes them working the same way on the social level that they do within families: “The collusion is maintained by directing attention away from the fearsome fact, or by repackaging its meaning in an acceptable format.” The costs of these social blind spots, he writes, are destructive communal illusions.”
― Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women—a Feminist Critique on Society's Obsession with Flawless Women