“Stigma works like this: Comic makes people with herpes the butt of his joke. Audience laughs. People with herpes see their worst fears affirmed - they are disgusting, broken, unlovable. People without herpes see their worst instincts validated - they… — Lindy West Copy Share Image
“Thanks for nothing, regular human mom. Footnote: nothing except for the unconditional love and support and meticulous care to make sure I faced the… — Lindy West Copy Share Image
The messaging campaign that stigmatized the term feminist definitely worked on me when I was a teenager. I always believed in equality, but there's… — Lindy West Copy Share Image
“Honestly, this 'Where do you get your confidence?' chapter could be sixteen words long. Because there was really only one step to my body acceptance: Look at pictures of fat women on the Internet until they don't make you uncomfortable anymore. That was the entire process. (Optional step two: Wear a crop top until you forget you're wearing a crop… — Lindy West Copy Share
“I never did manage to lose weight, though - not significantly - and my minor "successes" weren't through any eating patterns that could be… — Lindy West Copy Share Image
I don't want any woman to think that I don't have empathy and deep care for all women's body issues. I just want to… — Lindy West Copy Share Image
“So, what do you do when you're too big, in a world where bigness is cast not only as aesthetically objectionable, but also as a moral failing? You fold yourself up like origami, you make yourself smaller in other ways, you take up less space with your personality, since you can't with your body. You diet. You starve, you run… — Lindy West Copy Share
“Privilege means that it’s easy for white women to do each other favors. Privilege means that those of us who need it the least… — Lindy West Copy Share Image
I've always been an escapist, I guess, and I spend so much time on the internet absorbing ideas and processing the horrors of the world that when I'm actually going to read for pleasure, it's always something ridiculous about a dragon. I'm so saturated with the injustice and torment of the real world that it's really hard for me to… — Lindy West Copy Share
“We do not stigmatize people with stomach flu. The active ingredient in period stigma is misogyny.” — Lindy West Copy Share Image
“Don’t tell thin women to eat a cheeseburger. Don’t tell fat women to put down the fork. Don’t tell underweight men to bulk up. Don’t tell women with facial hair to wax, don’t tell uncircumcised men they’re gross, don’t tell muscular women to go easy on the dead-lift, don’t tell dark-skinned women to bleach their vagina, don’t tell black women… — Lindy West Copy Share
Indignation and determination are much more constructive emotions than shame and embarrassment. And feminism was this engine that turned one into the other. — Lindy West Copy Share Image
“I hate being fat. I hate the way people look at me, or don't. I hate being a joke; I hate the disorienting limbo between too visible and invisible; I hate the way that complete strangers waste my life out of supposed concern for my death. I hate knowing that if I did die of a condition that correlates with… — Lindy West Copy Share
