Corinne B

“But alas, I'd have to find a way to be opinionated without being too opinionated, authoritative without being a bitch about it, smart without being elitist, fair without being a pushover. If the boyfriends of my youth found me too authoritative when I should have been cheering on the sidelines as they kicked and tossed and smacked balls toward the vanguard, the male colleagues of my adulthood kept reminding me of my lack of authority as they unconsciously displayed theirs. I was always failing someone's standards of legitimacy, as a girlfriend, as a producer of opinions. It was an eternal no-win. I was always too big or too small, like Alice, and forever being told, in one way or another, 'Eat me.”
― Carina Chocano, You Play the Girl: On Playboy Bunnies, Stepford Wives, Train Wrecks, & Other Mixed Messages

“Strategic girls manage perception; idealistic girls go up against the narrative, because it’s at the root of the problem, and they get crushed every time.”
― Carina Chocano, You Play the Girl: And Other Vexing Stories That Tell Women Who They Are

“Love...also taught me that loss is a thing that builds around you. That what feels like safety is often just absence of current harm, and those two things are not the same.”
― Sophie Mackintosh, The Water Cure

“I was a woman and I couldn't speak with the voice of a man, because it was not my voice - not true and not my own. But there was more to it than that. By writing in a woman's voice I wanted to say that a woman, too, is a human being. To say that we, too, have the right to breathe, to cry out, and to sing.”
― Jasmin Darznik, Song of a Captive Bird