When I look around the world, I don't see too many damsels in distress. If they're a damsel in distress, they're manipulating some guy to help them.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that women often portray themselves as needing help to manipulate others into action.
Sigourney Weaver's quote reflects a critical observation on the traditional trope of 'damsels in distress.' It implies that, rather than being passive victims, many women are active agents who use their situations to influence and manipulate those around them, especially men, into providing assistance, thus challenging the stereotype of helplessness.
In practice
Discussing the representation of women in movies at a film festival.
I've always thought that a lot of the problems in the world would be solved if a spaceship did arrive, then anyone with one head and two arms and two legs would be your brother! It wouldn't matter where they were from or what they believed or anything. It might be good for us.
Writers write these male stereotypes, and it makes it ten times more interesting if a woman says the lines.
Please, God, please, don't let me be normal!
Most of life is hell. It’s filed with failure and loss. People disappoint you. Dreams don’t work out. Hearts get broken. Innocent journalists die. And the best moments of life, when everything comes together, are few and fleeting. But you’ll never get to the next great moment if you don’t keep going. So that’s what I do. I keep going.
I never think about Wall Street - why should I - but to go down there so often while filming 'Working Girl,' to become acquainted with this whole different world, and to find out what goes on behind the scenes is so interesting. There's so much of the city that you don't really bother to investigate. Ahh... New York.
Once I put that wig on, I didn't say an intelligent thing for four months. My voice went up. I walked differently. I'd ask incredibly stupid questions.
I was not a lovable child, and I'd grown into a deeply unlovable adult. Draw a picture of my soul, and it'd be a scribble with fangs.
Like how could you do nothing,_x000D_ and say, 'I'm doing my best.'_x000D_ How could you take almost everything,_x000D_ and then come back for the rest?_x000D_ How could you beg me to stay,_x000D_ reach out your hands and plead,_x000D_ and then pack up your eyes and run away_x000D_ as soon as I agreed?
There is no trust more sacred than the_x000D_ _x000D_ one the world holds with children.
But what are friends? What is a husband, even, compared with one's Mother? Of her love, one is always so sure! It is the only love that nothing - not even misconduct on our part - can take away from us.
Marriage, to women as to men, must be a luxury, not a necessity; an incident of life, not all of it.
Our people could not talk with these white-faced men, but they used signs which all people understand.
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