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b3fec2e
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Dorothy Parker, Sylvia Plath, Bessie Smith, Janis Joplin -- I can't help but note that most of the women who hold their own with the men seem unhappy and apt to die young. Lazy, popular opinion has it that this is because women are fundamentally unsuited to putting their head over the parapet and competing on the same terms as men. They just can't handle the big-boy stuff. They simply need to stop trying. But when I look at their undoing - ..
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Caitlin Moran |
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55f08e9
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Poor people can write. It's one of the few things poverty, and lack of connections, cannot stop you doing.
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Caitlin Moran |
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b4c9b9f
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I have a rule of thumb that allows me to judge - when time is pressing and one needs to make a snap judgment - whether some sexist bullshit is afoot. Obviously it is not 100 percent infallible but, by and large, it definitely points you in the right direction. And it's asking this question: "Are the men doing it? Are the men worrying about this as well? Is this taking up the men's time? Are the men told not to do this, as it's 'letting our ..
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Caitlin Moran |
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b7b28f1
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just go around being alive, and pointing at things. We're just, simply, in the world. It had never occurred to me what a wonderful thing this was.
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Caitlin Moran |
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26e1bc7
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a reformed bitch is going to cost a fortune in stamps.
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Caitlin Moran |
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13492fb
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turn our unsaid things into our life's work.
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Caitlin Moran |
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c527145
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No one has ever claimed for a moment that childless men have missed out on a vital aspect of their existence, and were the poorer and crippled by it. Da Vinci, Van Gogh, Newton, Faraday, Plato, Aquinas, Beethoven, Handel, Kant, Hume. Jesus. They all seem to have managed quite well.
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Caitlin Moran |
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fa6b317
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So here is the quick way of working out if you're a feminist. Put your hand in your pants.
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Caitlin Moran |
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31a528f
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In a world where you can get a spare kidney, a black-market Picasso or a ticket to ride into space, why can't I see some actual sex? Some actual fucking from people who want to fuck each other? Some chick in an outfit I halfway respect, having the time of her life? I have MONEY. I'm willing to PAY for this. I AM NOW A 35-YEAR-OLD WOMAN, AND I JUST WANT A MULTI-BILLION-DOLLAR INTERNATIONAL PORN INDUSTRY WHERE I CAN SEE A WOMAN COME. I just w..
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porn
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Caitlin Moran |
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c64c9e7
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When a woman says, "I have nothing to wear!" what she really means is, "There's nothing here for who I'm supposed to be today." Because"
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Caitlin Moran |
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c38a38c
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Personally, I feel the time has come for women to introduce their own Zero Tolerance policy on the Broken Window issues in our lives - I want a Zero Tolerance policy on "All the Patriarchal Bullshit."
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patriarchy
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Caitlin Moran |
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51be1b6
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You can always tell when a woman is with the wrong man, because she has so much to say about the fact that nothing's happening. When women find the right person, on the other hand, they just...disappear for six months, and then resurface, eyes shiny, and usually about six pounds heavier. "So what's he like?" you will say, waiting for the usual cloudburst of things he says and things he does and requests of analysis of what you think it mean..
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Caitlin Moran |
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591d4ed
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There is a black-and-white picture in my hallway, of me, Nancy, and Lizzie in the bath, when Nancy was eight months old and Lizzie two-and-a-half. I am gently biting Lizzie. Nancy, in turn, is gumming my face. All eyes are on the person taking the picture - Pete, who was, as the slight camera-wobble shows, laughing. There we are-a tangle of half-shared DNA, all interlocking with each other; all being watched over by the one who loves us bes..
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Caitlin Moran |
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a7b1cae
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As soon as my friends and I start dating for real, we enter an exhausting paradox - a belief that, in love, everything is not as it seems: the conviction that there is a common state of affairs whereby a man can be madly in love with you and wish to spend the rest of his life with you, but will indicate this in a variety of ways so subtle, only the truly talented and determined will discern his true desires. Like it's The Da Vinci Code, and..
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Caitlin Moran |
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ce31909
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Cynicism is like armor--it will, initially, protect you. But you cannot grow in armor; you cannot dance in armor. Cynicism restricts our growth. Cynicism is, in the end, an act of weakness. We must always have the cojones to be optimistic. To trust people. To forgive them their mistakes if we feel like they are trying to be better people, that they are trying to learn.
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Caitlin Moran |
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4235ecd
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those boys throw gravel at me while I ran up a hill - but I don't want my diary to pity me. As far as my diary will know, I had the philosophical upper hand there.
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Caitlin Moran |
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5cb5db0
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Women, it is presumed, will always end up having babies. They might go through silly, adolescent phases of pretending that it's something that they have no interest in - but, when push comes to shove, womanhood is a cul-de-sac that ends in Mothercare, and that's the end of that. All women love babies - just like all women love Manolo Blahnik shoes, and George Clooney. Even the ones who wear nothing but trainers, or are lesbians, and really ..
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Caitlin Moran |
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6ef4f8a
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There is no social upheaval that will really affect them. If you're comfortably middle-class, what's the worst a government policy could do? Ever? Tax you at 90 per cent and leave your bins, unemptied, on the pavement. But you and everyone you know will continue to drink wine - but maybe cheaper - go on holiday - but somewhere nearer - and pay off your mortgage - although maybe later. 'Consider, now, then, the poor. What's the worst a gover..
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Caitlin Moran |
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1387c52
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It seems that being a woman is very expensive and time-consuming. My innocence about this is incongruous, given my age, but total. I come from grunge, and then Britpop--scenes where you boast about how little you spend on an outfit ("Three quid! From a jumble sale!" "Ooooh, pricey--I found this jacket in a Dumpster. On a dead man. Under a fox carcass"), and taking pride in "getting ready to go out" consists of little more than washing your ..
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feminism
humor
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Caitlin Moran |
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e63fb39
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Your key hobbies need to be long country walks (get some fresh air in those lungs!), masturbation, and the revolution. Between those three, you should, in the long term, stay relatively sane.
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feminism
humor
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Caitlin Moran |
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f0bf718
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We are Henceforth-mongers, trying to make our Henceforth the most enticing. Because the secret of everyone who comes to London - who comes to any big city - is that they came here because they did not feel normal, back at home. The only way they will ever feel normal is if they hijack popular culture with their weirdness... and make the rest of the world suddenly wish to become as weird as them.
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inspirational
fame
normal
london
city
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Caitlin Moran |
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07ddba8
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A book is a beautiful, paper mausoleum, or tomb, in which to store ideas... to keep the bones of your thoughts in one place, for all time I just want to say - "Hello. We can hear you. The words survived."
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words
literature
books
fame
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Caitlin Moran |
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3fff5bc
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A book is a beautiful, paper mausoleum, or tomb, in which to store ideas... to keep the bones of your thoughts in one place, for all time. I just want to say - "Hello. We can hear you. The words survived."
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words
literature
books
fame
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Caitlin Moran |
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364c78b
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my old life was over, and I know - as I had always suspected - that kissing John Kite is the greatest luxury there is.
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Caitlin Moran |
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15d7a51
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I like the blue one too, baby" he said, companionably."
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Caitlin Moran |
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11d0197
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The idea of simply trotting around the world with John, for a year or more, is obviously, what Willy Wonka would have put in a special chocolate bar for me.
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Caitlin Moran |
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cc1e033
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You are the new religion. You are the new craze. You are the next stage in evolution. You are so palpably my superior, in every way, that I tremble like a child in your presence. You make my head spin. You make my heart burst. You make my soul explode, every fucking minute I am with you. What I am inescapably heading towards is , in this monologue, which might be the last thing I ever say, is: Dutch, I'm in love with you." His face was as o..
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Caitlin Moran |
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7d84a25
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How amazing to go to a gig thinking of nothing but how loud you will shout; how hard you will dance; how much you will sweat; how tightly you will hug your friends, as your favourite song plays. How amazing to react to music in the way music wants you - to become an ecstatic animal.
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Caitlin Moran |
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8b8aa84
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This is what happens, when it feels like the weight of the world is crushing right down on you. Your fear it's going to change you forever. And you're right. It is. It's going to turn you into something that's both beautiful, and the most indestructible thing on the planet.
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Caitlin Moran |
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fb0b968
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But that is all part of becoming an adult. That is the difference between girls and women. That they are finally ready to hear the secret of what makes them them. That they are strong enough - for good, or for ill - to ask someone what is, unexpectedly, the most terrifying, revelatory question, on Earth; one you have to be brave, and ready, to hear: "Why do you love me?"
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Caitlin Moran |
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2baa9af
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Still, life goes on, doesn't it? It really always does. It keeps bloody going on. I mean it in a good way, of course. However much you fuck things up, life just keeps going on, washing you downriver - even if you're just floating there, like a listless dead thing, making no effort, mouthing, 'Oh God, oh God', face down underneath the water. The current bears you on until, soon, the awful events are just tiny specks, left far behind you...
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Caitlin Moran |
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2797049
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Lines and grayness are natures equivalent of telling you not to fuck with someone. The equivalent of the yellow and black banding on a wasp or the markings on the back of a black widow spider. Lines are your weapons against idiots. Lines are your keep away from the wise and intolerant woman sign.
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Caitlin Moran |
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f7a71ea
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Would Jane Austen's characters have spent pages and pages discussing the relationships in their social circle if they'd been a bit more control of their own destinies? Would women fret themselves half to death about how they look and who fancies them if this wasn't the main thing they were still judged on? Would we give so much of a shit about our thighs if we, as a sex, owned the majority of the world's wealth instead of the men?
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Caitlin Moran |
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edaf665
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De momento, el unico plan que tengo es escribir. Se escribir, porque escribir (a diferencia de la coreografia, la arquitectura o conquistar reinos) es algo que puedes hacer aunque seas pobre y estes solo y no tengas infraestructura (una compania de ballet o unos canones, por ejemplo). Los pobres pueden escribir. Es de las pocas cosas que la pobreza, y la falta de contactos, no puede impedirte hacer.cai
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Caitlin Moran |
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84fd586
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Because the secret of everyone who comes to London--who comes to any big city--is that they came here because they did not feel normal, back at home.
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Caitlin Moran |
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6294162
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I would love someone to empirically tell me what I should do. Having to guess - improvise - all the time is so wearying.
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Caitlin Moran |
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be345a0
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That is the work of your teenage years - to build up and tear down and build up again, over and over, endlessly... They do not tell you this when you are fourteen, because the people who would tell you - your parents - are the very ones who built the thing you're so dissatisfied with. They made you how they want you. They made you how they you. They built you with all they know, and love - and so they can't see what you're : all the gap..
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parents
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Caitlin Moran |
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cdb8ca7
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throughout history, you can read the stories of women who--against all the odds--got being a woman right, but ended up being compromised, unhappy, hobbled, or ruined, because all around them society was still wrong.
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Caitlin Moran |
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5c325d4
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It's difficult to see the glass ceiling because it's made of glass. Virtually invisible. What we need is for more birds to fly above it and shit all over it, so we can see it properly.
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Caitlin Moran |
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5610349
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But the problem with battling yourself is that even if you win, you lose. At some point- scarred, and exhausted- you either accept that you must become a woman - that you are a woman - or you die.
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Caitlin Moran |
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af2fe20
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Tehat vegul is azt hiszem, a konyv eredeti cime, a How to be a Woman kicsit felrevezeto. A botladozo, remiszto es csodalatos evek alatt vegig azt hittem, hogy amit akarok, az, hogy nove valjak. Germaine Greer, Elizabeth Taylor, E. Nesbit, Courtney Love, Jilly Cooper es Lady Gaga valamifele mesebe illo otvozete. Hogy valamikeppen elsajatitsam a noi let misztikus muveszetet, es vegul varazsereju eszmenykepe legyek mindazoknak a dolgoknak, ame..
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Caitlin Moran |
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2ed0e7b
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You stop talking about things when you've worked them out. You're no longer an observer but a participant. You're too busy for this bullshit.
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relationships
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Caitlin Moran |