Most of all, it teaches you that your body is not just a sort of jar made out of meat that you lug around because it’s what you keep your brain in, but an equal and in fact quite opinionated and demonstrative partner in the joint production that is you.

Locker rooms are not, in actual fact, the secret clubhouses of the Effortlessly Thin Women’s Fat-Lady Harassment Society.

Defining virginity means directly affecting the lives of nearly all women, and many men as well. Despite what some people appear to think, defining virginity is not merely a philosophical exercise. It is an exercise in controlling how people behave, feel, and think, and in some cases, whether they live or die.

I want to get one thing straight right from the start: I am not a natural-born jock. I am about as intrinsically athletic as an oyster, with the innate grace and sporty prowess of a brick – a very cute oyster and a very intelligent brick, if I do say so myself, but oysterly and bricklike nevertheless.

We don’t just want what we want because we want it; we want what we want because that’s what we’ve learned to want.

You have the right to not have to constantly manage how you look for other people’s sake. You aren’t here to decorate the world for other people. You’re here to live in it for yourself, no matter what that looks like.

Real women are fat. And thin. And neither. And both. And otherwise.

There is no wrong way to have a body.

Some readers were aware that the novels they loved amounted to a propaganda campaign, that the love stories had a particular agenda that might or might not have anything at all to do with reality. But then as now, being a canny and independent-minded consumer of popular media did not bar one from also enjoying being manipulated by it.

We don't just want what we want because we want it; we want what we want because that's what we've learned to want.