Women

"In The Female Eunuch I argued that every girl child is conceived as a whole woman but from the time of her birth until her death she is progressively disabled. A woman's first duty to herself is to survive this process, then to recognize it, then to take measures to defend herself against it. For years after The Female Eunuch was written I travelled the earth to see if I could glimpse a surviving whole woman. She would be a woman who did not exist to embody male sexual fantasies or rely upon a man to endow her with identity and social status, a woman who did not have to be beautiful, who could be clever, who would grow in authority as she aged... No sooner had I caught sight of the whole woman than western marketing came blaring down upon her with its vast panoply of special effects, strutting and trumpteting the highly seductive gospel of salvation according to hipless,wombless, hard-titted Barbie. My strong women thrust their muscular feet into high heels and [learned] to totter; they stuffed their useful breasts into brassieres and instead of mothers' milk fed commercial formulae...to their children... Even the hardworking women of China began curling their hair to prove that they too were real (i.e. phony) women."

Germaine Greer, from The Whole Woman