185 Quotes by Lindy West

I fervently believe that people shouldn’t stay in bad relationships just because of some artificial rom-com notion of true love being “forever.” In fact, I think that the pressure of conforming to that framework ruins-literally RUINS-a lot of people’s lives.

So no, excuse me, we will not play likability anymore. It’s an endless runner – a game with no progress and no finish line – that women are expected to chase, that keeps us from doing the real work, accruing the real power. Chasing likability has been one of women’s biggest setbacks, by design. I don’t know that rejecting likability will get us anywhere, but I know that embracing it has gotten us nowhere.

He was, and then he wasn’t. One moment his body was the locus of his personhood, the next moment our memories had to pick up the slack.

Misogyny is explicitly, visibly incentivized and rewarded. You can watch it self-perpetuate in front of your eyes.

If my chair collapses under me right now, people will assume it’s because I’m fat. But if your chair collapses under you, it’s because you sat in a broken chair.

Around that time, just when I needed it, Leonard Nimoy’s Full Body Project came to me like a gift. The photographs are in black and white, and they feature a group of fat, naked women laughing, smiling, embracing, gazing fearlessly into the camera. In one, they sway indolently like the Three Graces; in another they re-create Herb Ritts’s iconic pile of supermodels. It was the first time I’d ever seen fat women presented without scorn. I.

And even though I would never phrase it like this, I agree that women don’t always get a chance to “fill our own vessels.” My dad worked all day. My mom worked all day, then came home and made dinner. Women do a lot. Women are neat.

Shame is a tool of oppression, not change. Fat.

In a certain light, feminism is just the long, slow realization that the stuff you love hates you.