Judith Martin Quotes

Culturally we don't allow women to be as free as they would like, because that is frightening. We either shun those women or deem them crazy… But being that woman who pushes the boundaries means you also bring in less desirable aspects of yourself. At the end of the day, women are expected to hold up the world, not annihilate it.

No lady is ever a gentleman.

No one yet knows what a man's province is, and how far that province, as conceived of today, is artificial.

There's so much judgment geared toward young girls. People just expect so much from girls. Even physically and aesthetically, people expect us to always look right, to have a certain etiquette - to talk a certain way and act a certain way - and to know certain things. It's all different expectations, but there are always expectations.

There's a real intense thing about manners in the South, a real prescribed way to be a woman.

It appears that ordinary men take wives because possession is not possible without marriage, and that ordinary women accept husbands because marriage is not possible without possession

So much of being a woman is telling lies

There is a certain expectation of girls to eventually grow up and behave and fall in line. I've always bucked against that.

You can't be creative and still be a good girl.

A lady is a woman who makes a man behave like a gentleman.

. . . women were brought up to have only one set of manners. A woman was either a lady or she wasn't, and we all know what the latter meant. Not even momentary lapses were allowed; there is no female equivalent of the boys-will-be-boys concept.

The Iron Rule of prudence for an Istanbulite Woman: If you are as fragile as a tea glass, either find a way to never encounter burning water and hope to marry an ideal husband or get yourself laid and broken as soon as possible. Alternatively, stop being a tea-glass woman!

And then also I think it's harder for women because comedy is so opposite of being ladylike.

I was raised as a tomboy with boys, and I never really feel like myself when I am really dolled up at premieres and showbiz events.

I don't know any women who don't think about what they look like, and I don't know any men who don't think about what women look like.

Women are taught that if you want to be a lady, keep your opinions to yourself and be polite.

A man is free to go up as high as he can reach up to; but I, with all my style and pep, can't get a man my equal because a girl is always judged by her mother.

Americans like fat books and thin women.

'I'll be back' always sounded a little girly to me.

Masculine and feminine roles are not biologically fixed but socially constructed.

I'm often uncomfortable with girliness, to be honest.

I think a woman gets more if she acts feminine.

I think that tennis is a lady's sport, so we should look out there like ladies.

In Georgia, apparently, men are men and women are women - at least in their folk dance.

It's possible that you have been told a time or 10 that you don't appreciate how tough your elders had it. It's true that, if you had been coming of age back in, say, 1960, you would probably be feeling more restricted, if only because you were doomed to spend your days in a skirt, nylon stockings and girdle.