Lykke Li Quotes

Few people realize what a handicap it is to be what people call a beautiful woman. I'm glad, of course, that I don't look like an unmade bed, but too often, I'm just taken at face value. And there aren't many men who believe a beautiful woman can have any brains.

Men are very tough, very critical of me. I think they expect you to basically just be a picture. They don't want to hear you speak.

If you are a man, you have to be like Joe McCarthy to be called “ruthless”. For a woman, all you have to do is put somebody on hold.

In our society, people look at women who are tenacious, smart, attractive, and talented and for whatever reason say, 'There must be something wrong with that equation. She couldn't possibly be all of those things at once.'

I wonder if there'll ever be a time where you're not judged by your appearance. It seems that wherever you've got to, your appearance is always discussed. It's never said about men. We talk about a man's charisma, not his looks.

Basically, women have to prove they are strong at all times. And then when they go on the attack, they have to not appear mean because those women often get the label of being catty.

I understand, as the young, attractive woman in film, that there's always going to be people seeking out extra salacious things for you to do.

In Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally.

The industry is quite chauvinistic generally. Expectations of women, girls, what they should look like, how they should be, what they should say, what they should wear, how their hair should be, what colour their skin should be.

Women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions which men think it manly to pay to the sex, when, in fact, men are insultingly supporting their own superiority.

No matter what a woman's appearance may be, it will be used to undermine what she is saying and taken to individualize - as her personal problem - observations she makes about the beauty myth in society.

A political woman loses her beauty within a year.

When we get married or interviewed for a job or play professional sports or run for president of the United States, we encounter a whole set of standards and expectations. We can be shamed for an outfit that's too slutty, too dowdy, too pricey--take your pick. That's the burden women carry into the fitting room.

I wish we lived in a world where how you looked or what you wore wasn't an issue for men or women, and it's by and large not an issue for men, so I wish it wasn't an issue for women, but it is.

I think it is childish for men to joke about women's clothes, to make fun of our hats, to complain over the cost of a good fur coat.

I've always had really wonderful people around me. But early on, I remember I would walk into a session or go do something with some musicians, and they viewed me, basically, as their chick singer.

I've gotten a lot of comments about how I look and I can't help but think, Is anyone listening to what I'm saying? If I were a guy, no one would be saying, 'Wow, look at those pants' or 'Look at those legs.'

As women, we need to stand together. We are judged and objectified often enough by men.

I've been called pushy and aggressive and all the negative words that are rarely applied to men with the same traits. But it doesn't bother me.

It sucks. When you're a woman in sports, people want you to show some skin.

I didn't want to be a boy, ever, but I was outraged that his height and intelligence were graces for him and gaucheries for me.

It's the idea that when you say 'actress', people think of an airy, floaty, no-brain person, which of course you can't be if you are an actor. It is an unfortunate word, which is why, for a time, I hung on to 'actor', because it just seemed more workmanlike, you know, like you say 'woman doctor' not 'doctoress'.

The whole sex symbol or babe thing doesn't bother me.

Most people aren't familiar enough with what actually goes on in professional wrestling to know just how badly women are treated in WWE narratives.

If you are a 19-year-old woman, there are very specific things that directors and the people in positions of power in the industry - who tend to be older men - are going to want you to be and do. They are not going to want some chatty, difficult, slightly spoilt girl.