The stronger that women grow, the more prestige, fame, and money is accorded to the display professions: They are held higher and higher above the heads of rising women, for them to emulate.

A culture fixation on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.

Historically, when a leader has deployed his own military against civilians, it's never been good. There's never been a time where it's ended well.

Poststructuralism. . . . is a form of literary criticism that uses elaborate wordplay to prove its central premise, that all language is internally contradictory and has no fixed meaning.

It is never smart, even in a strong democracy, to declare some debate off limits. In a weakening democracy it is catastrophic.

As women demanded access to power, the power structure used the beauty myth materially to undermine women's advancement.

The symbolic value of having an African-American president has certainly eased some racial tensions in America, but they're not gone.