Ordinary women attempt to change our bodies to resemble a pornographic ideal. Ordinary women construct a false self and come to hate this self.
Interpretation
The quote discusses how societal ideals can lead women to alter their self-image and ultimately dislike themselves.
Susan Griffin's quote highlights a societal issue where ordinary women feel pressured to modify their bodies according to unrealistic and pornographic standards. This can lead to a disconnection from their true selves and foster self-hatred as they construct a false identity based on external expectations rather than embracing their authentic selves.
In practice
In a speech about body positivity, this quote can be used to emphasize the importance of self-acceptance.
Every important social movement reconfigures the world in the imagination. What was obscure comes forward, lies are revealed, memory shaken, new delineations drawn over the old maps: it is from this new way of seeing the present that hope emerges for the future...Let us begin to imagine the worlds we would like to inhabit, the long lives we will share, and the many futures in our hands.
When we come to know who we truly are, we will see ourselves in all people.
The agnostic, the skeptic, is neurotic, but this does not imply a false philosophy; it implies the discovery of facts to which he does not know how to adapt himself. The intellectual who tries to escape from neurosis by escaping from the facts is merely acting on the principle that “where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise.
Nymphets do not occur in polar regions.
Men of patriarchal cultures have been committing heinous acts in the name of their God ever since they created a god for themselves. It seems that the earlier, goddess-oriented, nature-centered religions were far less cruel.
After all, I believe that legends and myths are largely made of 'truth'.
However, without considering this connection, there is no doubt but that more good than evil, more delight than sorrow, arises from compassion itself; there being so many things which balance the sorrow of it.
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