The more legal and material hindrances women have broken through, the more strictly and heavily and cruelly images of female beauty have come to weigh upon them.

When I was a baby feminist, leading feminist thinkers were insisting that if women ran the world, there would be no sadism or war.

The beauty myth is always actually prescribing behaviour and not appearance.

We need to get back into grappling with people we disagree with if we want to restore the Republic.

What are other women really thinking, feeling, experiencing, when they slip away from the gaze and culture of men?

From 1970 onwards, our culture told both sexes that individual expression was paramount. And for women, that was defined as the right to choose an interesting a career, a high-status mate, the desirable handbag or vacation, the perfect family size, and a definitionally fruitless quest for 'perfection.'

Most urgently, women's identity must be premised upon our 'beauty' so that we will remain vulnerable to outside approval, carrying the vital sensitive organ of self-esteem exposed to the air.