A Quote by Julie Burchill

What I find most upsetting about this new all-consuming beauty culture is that the obsession with good looks, and how you can supposedly attain them, is almost entirely female-driven.
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.
A cultural fixation on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty but an obsession about female obedience.
Sitting with a deck of cards in your hand all day is an obsession. Visiting print shops and bookstores and libraries is an obsession. And writing about this is an obsession. I think, in general, most collectors are obsessed. I think the only form of a rationalized greed is when you're collecting something you are supposedly serious about.
Yes, my consuming desire is to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, barroom regulars - to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording - all this is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always supposedly in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to seduce them, or as an invitation to intimacy. Yes, God, I want to talk to everybody as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night.
The mania started with insomnia and not eating and being driven, driven to find an apartment, driven to see everybody, driven to do New York, driven to never shut up.
I almost literally wake up in the morning starting to think of my next idea. It's almost always driven by what's in the news. The hard part, really, is getting from knowing what I want to say to figuring out how to say it in an image. I'm still not entirely sure how to explain how that happens... Suddenly, something just works.
In science, you really do need to have a purpose-driven life. You will succeed to the extent that you get the most out of your career so that you can give the most back. Try to be an addict, driven to achieve discoveries, learning new things, and then writing about them.
Yet it's true that looks matter in politics... It is also true that perfecting the outer shell has become an obsession in this country... Mitt Romney, Barack Obama and John Edwards almost always look good, and pretty much the same, in dark suits or casual wear. Fred Thompson always looks crepuscular and droopy. Often Hillary Clinton looks great, and sometimes she looks tired, heavier or puffier.
When looking at female body builders and reading about the industry and the culture, their bodies just break down. They end up having to get breast implants and not having menstrual cycles. The obsession of pushing your physical self way beyond what nature is expecting is really interesting. I liked the idea of these women; it's their career, but it's also their obsession.
Grand opera is the most powerful of stage appeals and that almost entirely through the beauty of music.
I don't know if this is a good thing to say, but the musical obsession has almost shifted to a creative obsession now.
If most American cities are about the consumption of culture, Los Angeles and New York are about the production of culture - not only national culture but global culture.
Though beauty is, with the most apt similitude, I had almost said with the most literal truth, called a flower that fades and dies almost in the very moment of its maturity; yet there is, methinks, a kind of beauty which lives even to old age; a beauty that is not in the features, but, if I may be allowed the expression, shines through them. As it is not merely corporeal it is not the object of mere sense, nor is it to be discovered but by persons of true taste and refined sentiment.
Success in math and the hard sciences, far from being a matter of gender, is almost entirely dependent on culture - a culture that teaches girls math isn't cool and no one will date them if they excel in physics.
This is a culture of female display. And the reason it's a culture of female display is that on the Upper East Side women far outnumber men, if you do the sex ratios. I can't say exactly what they are, but you could google it. People have said two to one. So, it's a female display culture because sex ratios are skewed toward men, and they sort of have their choice, even if they're married.... Also, women are economically dependent on men, and so there's that aspect of needing to perform your beauty and your scarcity.
As I look into the future, I see radical changes in both how people 'attain beauty,' and how the world perceives beauty. In general, I believe traditional beauty will be less valuable - and more uniqueness will be heralded.
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