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.
If alpha [the fine-structure constant] were bigger than it really is, we should not be able to distinguish matter from ether [the vacuum, nothingness], and our task to disentangle the natural laws would be hopelessly difficult. The fact however that alpha has just its value 1/137 is certainly no chance but itself a law of nature. It is clear that the explanation of this number must be the central problem of natural philosophy.
When there came a sound that I'd never heard the like of in all my born days. Eh, I won't forget that. The whole air was full of it, loud as thunder but far longer, cool and sweet as music over water but strong enough to shake the woods. And I said to myself, 'If that's not the Horn, call me a rabbit.
Inside each of us is a monster; inside each of us is a saint. The real question is which one we nurture the most, which one will smite the other.
The very aim and end of our institutions is just this: that we may think what we like and say what we think.
I don't think I should accept other people's suffering because I suffered. Just the opposite, because I suffered I don't want others to suffer.
In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved.
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