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Portrait of Lindy West

Lindy West

(1982) Editor United States

87 quotes in 324 categories

Lindy West talks about how the word ‘feminist’ was once used to shame her, yet she stresses that body acceptance starts with simply looking at yourself. She calls out how privilege lets white women help each other while others are left out. She argues that indignation and determination are more useful than shame, and that feminism fuels this shift.

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Lindy West is an editor from the United States, best known for Shrill.

Quick Facts About Lindy West

Born: March 9, 1982
Nationality: United States
Profession: Editor
Notable works: Shrill
Spouse: Q20638083

About Lindy West

Lindy West is an American writer, comedian, and activist. She is the author of several essay collections including Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman, which was later adapted as a television series. West writes about topics of feminism, popular culture, film, the fat acceptance movement and more.

Quotes by Lindy West

We only get one life. Wasting someone's time is the subtlest form of murder.

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“To be shrill is to reach above your station; to abandon your duty to soothe and please; in short, to be heard.…

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“* Real change is slow, hard, and imperceptible. It resists deconstruction. Likewise,”

Change

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“We do not stigmatize people with stomach flu. The active ingredient in period stigma is misogyny.”

Stigma

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“there are no magic bullets.* Real change is slow, hard, and imperceptible. It resists deconstruction. Likewise,”

Change

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It’s hard to feel hurt or frightened when you’re flooded with pity.

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Just live! Live now! Don't wait, and don't let anyone tell you that you're a work in progress.

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“Sincerity is an easy target, but I don’t want to excise sincerity from my life—that’s a lonely way to live. I”

Goals

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Being fat just a fact. It feels important to me to speak the truth about that, and to not use a euphemism.…

Euphemism

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“The first rule of first class, apparently, is that there are no rules. (The second rule is don't let poor people use…

First class

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“Something lurched awake inside of me. They talk to you this way until you “come out” as fat. They talk to you…

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When I started to internalize fat positivity and believe it, my response was the same one I had when I started to…

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“If my chair collapses under me right now, people will assume it's because I'm fat. But if your chair collapses under you,…

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“His life was beautiful and marked with loss; maybe not more than anyone else's, but when you only expect the best, heartbreak…

Expect the best

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“Women, it seemed, were obliged to be thick-skinned about their own rapes, while comics remained too thin-skinned to handle even mild criticism.…

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“Thanks for nothing, regular human mom. Footnote: nothing except for the unconditional love and support and meticulous care to make sure I…

Feminism

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“If you really want change to happen, if you really want to 'help' fat people, you need to understand that shaming an…

Change

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“Nobody wants to sit next to a fat person on a plane. Don't think we don't know. That's why - to return…

First class

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I didn't stop hating my body because my body changed; I stopped hating my body because my mind changed. I realized that…

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“I watched my friends become slender and beautiful, I watched them get picked and wear J.Crew and step into small boats without…

Bad people

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“Lots of men wanted to have sex with me - I dated casually, I got texts in the night - they just…

Christmas present

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If you're making yourself vulnerable in your writing, then they know where to hurt you, which is extra fun. I had to…

Coping

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On a practical level, I'm uncomfortable at comedy clubs because there are so many shitty dude comics who have made my life…

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“Honestly, this 'Where do you get your confidence?' chapter could be sixteen words long. Because there was really only one step to…

Confidence

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“I hate being fat. I hate the way people look at me, or don't. I hate being a joke; I hate the…

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“It felt alien to be confronted so vocally and so publicly (and for such an arbitrary reason), but it also felt familiar.…

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“There are no “good” abortions and “bad” abortions, there are only pregnant people who want them and pregnant people who don’t, pregnant…

Abortion

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“sometimes think of people’s personalities as the negative space around their insecurities. Afraid of intimacy? Cultivate aloofness. Feel invisible? Laugh loud and…

Aloofness

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“Airlines have no incentive to fix this problem until we, collectively, as a society, demand it. We don’t insist on a solution…

Bigotry

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“We have been weathering this hurricane wall of doubt and violence for so long, and now, more crystalline than ever, we have…

Fight

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“Stigma works like this: Comic makes people with herpes the butt of his joke. Audience laughs. People with herpes see their worst…

Comedy

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“Before the day I didn't fit, this conversation was largely an abstraction for me. My stance was the same as it is…

Body image

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“The most significant source of my adolescent period anxiety was the fact that, in America in 2016 (and far more so in…

Action movie

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“We are seething at how long we have been ignored, seething for the ones who were long ago punished for telling the…

Long ago

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Indignation and determination are much more constructive emotions than shame and embarrassment. And feminism was this engine that turned one into the…

Determination

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“Privilege means that it’s easy for white women to do each other favors. Privilege means that those of us who need it…

Privilege

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“This fetishization of not censoring yourself, of being an ‘equal-opportunity offender,’ is bizarre and bad for comedy. When did ‘not censoring yourself’…

Censor

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“So, what do you do when you’re too big, in a world where bigness is cast not only as aesthetically objectionable, but…

Bigness

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Abortion. Feminism. Online harassment. Social justice. Women's "no"s are constantly doubted and eroded in our culture. Saying "no" and sticking to it …

Abortion

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“Maybe periods wouldn’t be so frightening if we didn’t refer to them as “red tide” or “shark week” or any other euphemism…

Shark Week

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