#reo

Age is a peculiar kind of thief. It slips up on you and steps inside your skin and is so quiet and methodical in its work that you never realize it has stolen your youth until you look into the mirror one morning and see a man you don't recognize. ↗

— James Lee Burke

#age

Are boys encouraged to express sadness, fear, or anxiety? In general, our society gives boys permission for one emotion: anger. If a boy is hurt or upset, he may be comforted briefly, but then he is told to stop crying and "be a man." This message usually implies he should hide his feelings. Boys and men are supposed to be solid unemotional rocks. Demonstrations of emotions are seen as "silly." Anger is seen as a sign of strength. Males are considered to be standing up for their rights if they react to a frustrating or undesirable event with anger. Outrage is often the only reaction to an injustice that is allowed from boys. ↗

— Meg Kennedy Dugan

#gender #stereotypes #anger

... unfools of unbeing ... means quite clearly people who are too stereotyped to be eccentric – people who are too dead spiritually to exist at all and who call alive individual fools ↗

— Norman Friedman

#poetry #spirituality #stereotypes #art

Erlaube," fuhr Meister Abraham fort, "erlaube, mein Johannes, mit dem Just magst du mich kaum vergleichen. Er rettete einen Pudel, ein Tier, das jeder gern um sich duldet, von dem sogar angenehme Dienstleistungen zu erwarten, mittelst Apportieren, Handschuhe-, Tabaksbeutel- und Pfeife-Nachtragen usw., aber ich rettete einen Kater, ein Tier, vonr dem sich viele entsetzen, das allgemein als perfid, keiner sanften, wohlwollenden Gesinnung, keiner offenherzigen Freundschaft fähig ausgeschrieen wird, das niemals ganz und gar die feindliche Stellung gegen den Mensch aufgibt, ja, einen Kater rettete ich aus purer uneigennütziger Menschenliebe ... Es ist das gescheiteste, artigste, ja witzigste Tier der Art, das man sehen kann, dem es nur noch an der höhern Bildung fehlt, die du, mein lieber Johannes, ihm mit leichter Mühe beibringen wirst. ↗

— Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann

#dogs #perception #poodles #preconceptions #prejudice

[I]f we revert to history, we shall find that the women who have distinguished themselves have neither been the most beautiful nor the most gentle of their sex. ↗

— Mary Wollstonecraft

#beauty #clichés #distinction #empowerment #gender

... I intend to marry Agatha myself. She may be a thousand years old, but she makes an incomparable jam tart, beauty fades, but cooking is eternal. ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#beauty

Why live in fear that he might find me disgusting someday, when I could make it happen right now? ↗

— Rachel Hartman

#fear #self-esteem-or-lack-thereof #beauty

Western women have been controlled by ideals and stereotypes as much as by material constraints. ↗

— Naomi Wolf

#constraints #controlled #ideals #material #much

Like most guys, I had bought into the stereotype that all feminists were white, lesbian, unattractive male bashers who hated all men. But after reading the work of these black feminists, I realized that this was far from the truth. After digging into their work, I came to really respect the intelligence, courage and honesty of these women. Feminists did not hate men. In fact, they loved men. But just as my father had silenced my mother during their arguments to avoid hearing her gripes, men silenced feminists by belittling them in order to dodge hearing the truth about who we are. ↗

— Byron Hurt

#equality #feminism #hurt #pro-feminist #sexism

While Catholics usually paint the Savior suffering, Mormon artists tend to depict Him as a rugged Idaho mountain man – the kind of Jesus you wouldn’t mind dating. In this particular picture he was healing a blonde child, because blondes were big in Jerusalen in 33 A.D. (131) ↗

— Elna Baker

#dating