Cosmetics Quotes

Why does the social order feel the need to defend itself by evading the fact of real women, our faces and voices and bodies, and reducing the meaning of women to these formulaic and endlessly reproduced beautiful images? Though unconscious personal anxieties can be a powerful force in the creation of a vital lie, economic necessity practically guarantees it. An economy that depends on slavery needs to promote images of slaves that justify the institution of slavery. Western economies are absolutely dependent now on the continued underpayment of women. An idealogy that makes women feel worth less was urgently needed to counteract the way feminism had begun to make us feel worth more. This does not require a conspiracy; merely an atmosphere. The contemporary economy depends right now on the representation of women within the beauty myth.

~ Naomi Wolf

Where woman do not fit the Iron Maiden [societal expectations/assumptions about women's bodies], we are now being called monstrous, and the Iron Maiden is exactly that which no woman fits, or fits forever. A woman is being asked to feel like a monster now though she is whole and fully physically functional. The surgeons are playing on the myth's double standard for the function of the body. A man's thigh is for walking, but a woman's is for walking and looking beautiful. If women can walk but believe our limbs look wrong, we feel that our bodies cannot do what they are meant to do; we feel as genuinely deformed and disabled as the unwilling Victorian hypochondriac felt ill.

~ Naomi Wolf

Sexual satisfaction eases the stranglehold of materialism, since status symbols no longer look sexual, but irrelevant. Product lust weakens where emotional and sexual lust intensifies. The price we pay for artificially buoying up this market is our heart's desire. The beauty myth keeps a gap of fantasy between men and women. That gap is made with mirrors; no law of nature supports it. It keeps us spending vast sums of money and looking distractedly around us, but its smoke and reflection interfere with our freedom to be sexually ourselves.

~ Naomi Wolf

Spokespeople sell women the Iron Maiden and name her Health: if public discourse were really concerned with women's health, it would turn angrily upon this aspect of the beauty myth.

~ Naomi Wolf

Modern cosmetic surgeons have a direct financial interest in a social role for women that requires them to feel ugly. They do not simply advertise for a share of a market that already exists: Their advertisements create new markets. It is a boom industry because it is influentially placed to create its own demand through the pairing of text with ads in women's magazines. The industry takes out ads and gets coverage; women get cut open. They pay their money and they takes their chances. As surgeons grow richer, they are able to command larger and brighter ad spaces.

~ Naomi Wolf

The differences between women are all cosmetic.

~ Ljupka Cvetanova

As far as cosmetics are used for adornment in a conscious and creative way, they are not emblems of inauthenticity: it is when they are presented as the real thing, covering unsightly blemishes, disguising a repulsive thing so that it is acceptable to the world that their function is deeply suspect. The women who dare not go out without their false eyelashes are in serious psychic trouble.

~ Germaine Greer

Health makes good propaganda.

~ Naomi Wolf

Wrinkles ? Why all the fuss ? Think of them as lines of distinction, marks of maturity.

~ Alex Morritt

I am convinced that all ladies are not the same. Some have pretty faces, others have beautiful characters. Some have facial make-ups, others have mental make-ups!

~ Israelmore Ayivor

If you are talking about beauty, books are cheaper than cosmetics.

~ Svaradiva

I love the confidence that makeup gives me.

~ Tyra Banks

What are you gonna do, angel face? Stab me with your eyebrow pencil?

~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

I thought of writing a summary about you, but when I finished it was a book.

~ Amit Kalantri

With you as an inspiration, a painter will create his best painting, a writer will write his best literature and a poet will create his best poetry.

~ Amit Kalantri

I think poverty is not the worst thing in the world, blindness is, because blind people cannot see your beauty.

~ Amit Kalantri

The air is full of flying kisses sent by the people who are watching you.

~ Amit Kalantri

If you want to test cosmetics, why do it on some poor animal who hasn't done anything? They should use prisoners who have been convicted of murder or rape instead. So, rather than seeing if perfume irritates a bunny rabbit's eyes, they should throw it in Charles Manson's eyes and ask him if it hurts.

~ Ellen Degeneres

Must have a lot of male customers to let her dress like that. Nice view.

~ Dianne Harman Cornered Coyote

I do not like these painted faces that look all alike; and I think women are foolish to dull their expression and obscure their personality with powder, rouge, and lipstick.

~ W. Somerset Maugham

No one has the right to demand that your body be something other than what it is.

~ Agnostic Zetetic

I'd never opened up the gas station if it had been someone else, but I know Tucker's fond of you. It's a shame you don't keep in touch with the old man.

~ Dianne Harman Cornered Coyote

At least you've brought gifts. What's in the basket?She rummaged through the contents. A few sweetmeats and lozenges. Packets of raisins. But mostly it's Aunt Thea's surplus cosmetics and remedies. She sends away for every product advertised in every ladies' magazine. I like to see them put to some use.He blinked at her. These are your gifts?Your men have depleted our stores of food, and I didn't have time to prepare anything else.What are they supposed to do with- he held up a brown bottle and peered at the label- Dr. Jacobs' Miracle Elixir? He plucked a small jar out next. Excelsior Blemish Cream?Women are women, Logan. Every girl needs a bit of luxury and a chance to feel pretty now and then.

~ Tessa Dare