Because you can't have depths without surfaces.
Linda Grant, thinking about clothes, books and other matters.
Pure Collection Ltd.
Net-a-porter UK

Thursday, 31 July 2008

Misogyny defined

. . . one of the great rhetorical tricks of patriarchy, which is to define women’s value in terms of appearance, and simultaneously to define appearance as something so utterly trivial that only completely shallow and useless creatures — like, say, women! — would care about it.

writes Kate Harding,

7 comments:

Meg said...

I don't think I've ever heard it put better!

But now I have Hymn to Him stuck in my head from My Fair Lady.

Susan B said...

Actually the post you've linked to was authored by Sweet Machine, not Kate. But hell yeah, she's nailed it right there.

Kelly said...

I have never thought of it that way, but....wow.

Duchesse said...

A close friend of mine ran a successful matchmaking business for successful men seeking mates. She put the men through many assessments, and they provided detailed criteria for the women they hoped to meet. She told a table of stunned women gathered at my home a few weeks ago, "Their criteria meant nothing. What they cared about was looks, period."

Kelly said...

duchesse - I'd be tempted to say that it seems the men who are so superficial are the ones who need professional help getting a date.

Anonymous said...

That's why men die younger than women...stupidity blocks arteries.

George S said...

I fully intend dying first, Stephanie.