A Quote by Mary Helen Bowers
My company, Ballet Beautiful, is built around celebrating the strength and femininity of the female body - for me, pregnancy has just been an extension of that.
Related Quotes
To the "masculists" of both sexes, "femininity" implies all that men have built into the female image in the past few centuries: weakness, imbecility, dependence, masochism, unreliability, and a certain "babydoll" sexuality that is actually only a projection of male dreams. To the "feminist" of both sexes, femininity is synonymous with the eternal female principle, connoting strength, integrity, wisdom, justice, dependability, and a psychic power foreign and therefore dangerous to the plodding masculists of both sexes.
I have been carrying on a dialogue between the landscape and the female body (based on my own silhouette) I am overwhelmed by the feeling of having been cast from the womb (nature). Through my earth/body sculptures I become one with the earth I become an extension of nature and nature becomes an extension of my body
The construction of femininity is a construction, yes, but also it can be twisted and turned around in such a way that doesn't necessarily mean it is pointing to the female body or male body in such a binary fashion. The culture is already there and has always been, but not as equal citizens. I think there is more progress to come.
Ballet Beautiful has made my pregnancy a joy. I've avoided back pain and swelling by keeping my core strong and body moving.
I tend to like strong female characters. It just interests me dramatically. A strong male character isn't interesting because it has been done and it's so cliched. A weak male character is interesting: somebody else hasn't done it a hundred times. A strong female character is still interesting to me because it hasn't been done all that much, finding the balance of femininity and strength. [From a 1986 Fangoria interview]
I've come to the conclusion that beautiful women in the West aren't comfortable finding strength in their femininity. They want to do masculine-oriented things to establish their femininity. It's a contradiction.
I was a ballet dancer. I did other kinds of dance but ballet was my great love. But then it became clear, when I was 12, that my body wasn't going to be right. That's always a heartbreaking moment because there's nothing you can do about that. Your body is just not right. You don't have enough turnout. You're not built properly.
I recognised that femininity and strength are not mutually exclusive, and I think that femininity has often been equated with weakness, but we know it's not.
I truly believe that a beautiful woman is a beautiful woman, but a beautiful woman with a brain is an absolutely lethal combination. Women of integrity, depth, sensuality and strength have always been my source of inspiration, the reason for what I do and how I got to where I am today. They are all my muse. If my quest, in what I do - to make women look and feel beautiful - reflects even a tiny fraction of my deep-rooted respect for them, and succeeds in celebrating these lives of strength and substance, then I will consider it a job well done.
It's all too easy when talking about female gymnasts to fall into the trap of infantilizing them, spending more time worrying more about female vulnerability than we do celebrating female strength.
Now it seems to me that love of some kind is the only possible explanation of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is in the world. I cannot conceive of any other explanation. I am convinced that there is no other, and that if the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. Pleasure for the beautiful body, but pain for the beautiful soul.
Fly fishing is the most beautiful way of trying to catch a fish; not the most efficient, just as ballet is the most beautiful way of moving the body between between two points, not the most direct. Fly fishing is to fishing as ballet is to walking.
Femininity in general is seen as frivolous. People often say feminine people are doing “the most”, meaning that to don a dress, heels, lipstick, and big hair is artifice, fake, and a distraction. But I knew even as a teenager that my femininity was more than just adornments; they were extensions of me, enabling me to express myself and my identity. My body, my clothes, and my makeup are on purpose, just as I am on purpose.
The disciplinary power that inscribes femininity in the female body is everywhere and it is nowhere; the disciplinarian is everyone and yet no one in particular.
Often, I'll read a script and the female character's an extension or serves some sort of purpose in terms of the male character's narrative and it just isn't fully formed. But they will be very beautiful. Whether a secretary or a doctor or a vet, they will be very beautiful.
You have to understand, everyone's body was built to do something. I was built to do something, and that's how I was built. I think the world is realizing we were promoting one body type, and there have always been many.
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