Beyond the immediate risks to her health and the health of her baby, when a woman chooses c-section, she decreases the chance that she will be able to get pregnant again and increases the chance that if she does get pregnant, the pregnancy will occur...
Since middle-class Western women can best be weakened psychologically now that we are stronger materially, the beauty myth, as it has resurfaced in the last generation, has had to draw on more technological sophistication and reactionary fervor than ...
An economy that depends on slavery needs to promote images of slaves that “justify” the institution of slavery. The contemporary economy depends right now on the representation of women within the beauty myth. Economist John Kenneth Galbraith off...
The only way to make a library safe is to lock people out of it. As long as they are allowed to read the books 'any old time they have a mind to,' libraries will remain the nurseries of heresy and independence of thought. They will, in fact, preserve...
I struggled with how I could begin to communicate across the immense chasm that my husband’s affair had put between myself and this man that, only months ago, had been the person I would have said I was closest to and knew better that anyone else i...
Is this a negative perspective? The stance of a victim? No, It is a statement of truth. The way it is for a woman who refuses to be cast aside without protest. Who has the courage to bare her face and her heart to the reality of her partner’s infid...
Gratitude opens the heart and infuses the mental, physical and emotional body with tenderness, patience and peace—and in time, even joy. In a state of gratitude, anger and bitterness fade away. But to reach this place from a place of loss and grief...
Those who make us believe that anything’s possible and fire our imagination over the long haul, are often the ones who have survived the bleakest of circumstances. The men and women who have every reason to despair, but don’t, may have the most t...
Why had no one told me that my body would become a battlefield, a sacrifice, a test? Why did I not know that birth is the pinnacle where women discover the courage to become mothers? But of course there is no way to tell this or to hear it. Until you...
A bulimic person may be so disconnected from her experience that she does not even know what she needs or wants. If she does not know, needing something or someone only confirms her sense that she is weak and inadequate. She believes her needs are no...
In the South you are ashamed of being a virgin. Boys. Men. They lie about it. Because it means less to women, Father said. He said it was men invented virginity not women. Father said it's like death: only a state in which the others are left and I s...
As I get older I see that running has changed for me. What used to be about burning calories is now more about burning up what is false. Lies I used to tell myself about who I was and what I could do, friendships that cannot withstand hills or mil...
I understand that you come from a generation of women who had to work hard to be heard, but for you to impugn my feminism and act as though I'm a scourge upon women everywhere, just because I refuse to spread your particular agenda? That's dark, and ...
Even though I can’t tell others whether they should chase their marathon dreams, I highly recommend they do something completely out of character, something they never in a million years thought they’d do, something they may fail miserably at. Be...
Within this enclosed women's world, so to say, behind the walls and fortifications of it, I felt the presence of a great ideal, without which the garrison would not have carried on so gallantly; the idea of a Millennium when women were to reign supre...
One of the ridiculously difficult things about raising children is that they are constantly developing and changing so that just when you think you have them figured out, they throw you a curve, a new twist you never saw coming. They are like mutatin...
Every time we cheer the downfall of a powerful woman, we're giving ourselves the message that power is bad and we shouldn't desire it. Every time we revel in a beautiful woman's aging or weight gain, we reinforce the idea that we, too, are less valua...
In my view, it is an error to think about 'alternatives to prison' if what we mean by that is 'electronic bracelets,' through which people are subject to computer-monitored house arrest, or granting fuller surveillance and disciplinary powers and tec...
Mom, how do you know if the guy is guy?” You mean if he’ll be a good husband?” She pauses, then says “The ticket is for the man to love the woman more than she loves him.” Shouldn’t it be equal?” Mom cackles. “It can never be equal.�...
You may think that hiding your pain from sight is somehow going to make it disappear. I can tell you from experience that it isn’t. It is just like the time as a kid when you really didn’t want to eat your greens. If you hid them underneath a pie...
Like the lotus flower, business blooms in the mud, and in the dark of night. The lotus is an amazing creation of God, because for all of its beauty, it is the sum total of work performed in a mess. It is also a creation that has the ability to create...
