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1 " On one hand the eternal attraction of man towards femininity (cf. Gn. 2:23) frees in him-or perhaps it should free-a gamut of spiritual-corporal desires of an especially personal and " sharing" nature (cf. analysis of the " beginning" ), to which a proportionate pyramid of values corresponds. On the other hand, " lust" limits this gamut, obscuring the pyramid of values that marks the perennial attraction of male and female. "
2 " Inside every woman, is a crazy girl. And we all know what I'm talking about. That part of you that is entangled with insecurities, fears, and absolute insanity! The art of femininity lies in the molding, pounding, and defeating of that crazy girl on a daily basis! Look at any woman, and you're looking at a woman fighting a daily battle, wielding her weapons in war, every day! I have said it before and I'll say it again: it is never easy being a woman! And if we could only pound that crazy, insecure girl out of ourselves, it would make such the difference! "
― C. JoyBell C.
3 " Scientists can test only what they do not take for granted. That can make studying familiar phenomena particularly challenging...This may be especially true of masculinity, femininity and sexuality, because certain ideas abut gender and sexuality are so broadly shared in our culture "
4 " Radical feminist theorists do not seek to make gender a bit more flexible, but to eliminate it. They are gender abolitionists, and understand gender to provide the framework and rationale for male dominance. In the radical feminist approach, masculinity is the behaviour of the male ruling class and femininity is the behaviour of the subordinate class of women. Thus gender can have no place in the egalitarian future that feminism aims to create. "
― Sheila Jeffreys , Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism
5 " What does this wildish intuition do for women? Like the wolf, intuition has claws that pry things open and pin things down, it has eyes that can through the shields of persona, it has ears that hear beyond the range of mundane human hearing. With these formidable psychic tools a woman takes on a shrewd and even precognitive animal consciousness, one that deepens her femininity and sharpens her ability to move confidently in the outer world. "
― Clarissa Pinkola Estés , Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype
6 " Feminism and femininity are not mutually exclusive. It is misogynistic to suggest that they are. Sadly, women have learned to be ashamed and apologetic about pursuits that are seen as traditionally female, such as fashion and makeup. But our society does not expect men to feel ashamed of pursuits considered generally male - sports cars, certain professional sports. In the same way, men's grooming is never suspect in the way women's grooming is - a well-dressed man does not worry that, because he is dressed well, certain assumptions might be made about his intelligence, his ability, or his seriousness. A woman, on the other hand, is always aware of how a bright lipstick or a carefully-put-together outfit might very well make others assume her to be frivolous. "
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie , Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions
7 " Girls and women, in their new, particular unfolding, will only in passing imitate men's behavior and misbehavior and follow in male professions. Once the uncertainty of such transitions is over it will emerge that women have only passed through the spectrum and the variety of those (often laughable) disguises in order to purify their truest natures from the distorting influences of the other sex. Women, in whom life abides and dwells more immediately, more fruitfully and more trustingly, are bound to have ripened more thoroughly, become more human human beings, than a man, who is all too light and has not been pulled down beneath the surface of life by the weight of a bodily fruit and who, in his arrogance and impatience, undervalues what he thinks he loves. This humanity which inhabits woman, brought to term in pain and humiliation, will, once she has shrugged off the conventions of mere femininity through the transformations of her outward status, come clearly to light, and men, who today do not yet feel it approaching, will be taken by surprise and struck down by it. One day (there are already reliable signs which speak for it and which begin to spread their light, especially in the northern countries), one day there will be girls and women whose name will no longer just signify the opposite of the male but something in their own right, something which does not make one think of any supplement or limit but only of life and existence: the female human being.This step forward (at first right against the will of the men who are left behind) will transform the experience of love, which is now full of error, alter its root and branch, reshape it into a relation between two human beings and no longer between man and woman. And this more human form of love (which will be performed in infinitely gentle and considerate fashion, true and clear in its creating of bonds and dissolving of them) will resemble the one we are struggling and toiling to prepare the way for, the love that consists in two solitudes protecting, defining and welcoming one another. "
― Rainer Maria Rilke , Letters to a Young Poet
8 " Thirty years on, femininity is still compulsory for women—and has become an option for men—while genuine femaleness remains grotesque to the point of obscenity. Meanwhile, the price of the small advances we have made towards sexual equality has been the denial of femaleness as any kind of a distinguishing character. "
― Germaine Greer , The Whole Woman
9 " She had that kind of undeniable femininity that few women achieve, bogged down as we are by other things. "
10 " I don't mind being burdened with being glamorous and sexual. Beauty and femininity are ageless and can't be contrived, and glamour, although the manufacturers won't like this, cannot be manufactured. Not real glamour; it's based on femininity. "
― Marilyn Monroe
11 " The beauty myth of the present is more insidious than any mystique of femininity yet: A century ago, Nora slammed the door of the doll's house; a generation ago, women turned their backs on the consumer heaven of the isolated multiapplianced home; but where women are trapped today, there is no door to slam. The contemporary ravages of the beauty backlash are destroying women physically and depleting us psychologically. If we are to free ourselves from the dead weight that has once again been made out of femaleness, it is not ballots or lobbyists or placards that women will need first; it is a new way to see. "
― Naomi Wolf , The Beauty Myth
12 " It is a naive sort of feminism that insists that women prove their ability to do all the things that men do. This is a distortion and a travesty. Men have never sought to prove that they can do all the things women do. Why subject women to purely masculine criteria? Women can and ought to be judged by the criteria of femininity, for it is in their femininity that they participate in the human race. And femininity has its limitations. So has masculinity. That is what we’ve been talking about. To do this is not to do that. To be this is not to be that. To be a woman is not to be a man. To be married is not to be single - which may mean not to have a career. To marry this man is not to marry all the others. A choice is a limitation. "
― Elisabeth Elliot , Let Me Be a Woman
13 " Kate Walker´s attitude is characteristic of contemporary feminists' determination not to reject femininity but to empty the term of its negative connotations, to reclaim and refashion the category: " I have never worried that embroidery's association with femininity, sweetness, passivity and obedience may subvert my work's feminist intention. Femininity and sweetness are part of women's strength. Passivity and obedience, moreover, are the very opposites of the qualities necessary to make a sustained effort in needlework. What's required are physical and mental skills, fine aesthetic judgement in colour, texture and composition; patient during long training: and assertive individuality of design (and consequence disobedience of aesthetic convention). Quiet strength need not be mistaken for useless vulnerability" . "
14 " The notion that women shouldn't care about personal success -- or the work that gets them there -- is disengenuous; it is impossible for women not to have jobs anymore, so it doesn't make sense to expect them to structure their lives around getting married. The real failure is our cultural incapacity to make room for women to live and thrive outside of traditional conceptions of femininity and relationships. After all, we can eat without marriage, but not without work. "
― Samhita Mukhopadhyay
15 " Masculinity cannot exist without femininity. On its own, masculinity has no meaning, because it is but one half of a set of power relations. Masculinity pertains to male dominance as femininity pertains to female subordination. "
― Sheila Jeffreys , Unpacking Queer Politics: A Lesbian Feminist Perspective
16 " She refuses to support the slogan - Men are equal to women - if this translates to her femininity being faded out or confused by trying to please a selfish idea of anyone wanting a woman to be both herself and a man. "
― Gloria D. Gonsalves , The Wisdom Huntress: Anthology of Thoughts and Narrations
17 " I wear a lot of pink cos' seeing pink activates endorphins and energizes my creativity. It is a colour of femininity and fierceness "
― Janna Cachola
18 " It is only through my daughter that I have come to realise that a life without femininity – devoid of mystery, emotion, gentleness and the unerring power of a woman’s love – is no life at all. "
― Antonella Gambotto-Burke , Mama: Love, Motherhood and Revolution
19 " The vagina is obliterated from the imagery of femininity in the same way that the signs of independence and vigor in the rest of her body are suppressed. "
― Germaine Greer , The Female Eunuch
20 " The idea that " femininity is artificial" is also blatantly misogynistic. Just as woman is man's " other" , so too is femininity masculinity's " other" . Under such circumstances, negative connotations like " artificial" , " contrived" , and " frivolous" become built into our understanding of femininity - indeed, this is precisely what allows masculinity to always come off as " natural" , " practical" and " uncomplicated" . "