Catherine Reitman Quotes

I think that we are so challenged as women to be everything and do everything and make it look easy.

Women do feel like they're in a box. Society, Hollywood, some men-they want to wrap women up in a neat little package.

The sad thing about our society is that women are put in one of two categories. You're either in the beautiful category and you're seen as sexy and beautiful, or some version of that, or you're put into another category... The latter category affords women the opportunity to be smart, funny, independent, mean, strong, intelligent and opinionated. We take them seriously as politicians, if they fit into that latter category. We respect their opinions more and give them higher expectations. That latter category is what allows female actors to be characters.

Sadly, in any industry and in any work-related environment, females always strive to achieve a certain amount of perfection, whether that be skinny or pretty. It's a constant, in our society.

Growing up in Texas, you were either pretty or smart. Smart didn't get you very far, because there weren't too many job opportunities for women. I wondered why you couldn't be both.

It is very difficult for girls. They're told to look one way, but to act another way.

It's really, really tough being a woman. I think about getting work done all the time. Look at Nicole Kidman - her face is completely done.

In this country, if a woman wants to work, she has very little choice. After you cross the age suitable for a heroine, there is nothing in the middle; the next thing you do is you become a mother.

Success is hard in general for most women. We now have such busy lives, and we're told we can do everything - you know, we can have the relationship and the marriage and the kids and the career.

My mom had started to go to work when I was nine or ten, so I was aware of women trying to find their own identities by working. But I was still influenced by men to such an extreme. I wanted to play their games and wanted to compete in their world and be like them.

I was very strongly influenced by women's magazines and I really believed tha a woman could not be married and raise a family and have a successful career all at the same time.

I think women in pop have been declawed and defanged, and they're just meant to look pretty and sing pretty.

There's more pressure on women to be chirpy and perky.

I think there are a lot of rules for women. We have a lot of expectations and a lot of rules for women. So we're expected to march in a straight line, and when we don't, all hell breaks loose.

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.

At times, it seems as if the only women effortlessly balancing their jobs, kids, husbands and homes are the ones on TV.

Whenever a female takes a strong stand for herself, the majority of the time they have to really, really narrow it down to being feminine and wearing dresses and just being lipstick chic.

Modern women are just bombarded. There's nothing but media telling us we're all supposed to be great cooks, have great style, be great in bed, be the best mothers, speak seven languages, and be able to understand derivatives. And we don't really have women we're modeling after, so we're all looking for how to do this.

Life's tricky for women because they have to make more choices than men. And yes, choice is good, but boy, you better be an expert choice-maker.

One of the sad commentaries on the way women are viewed in our society is that we have to fit one category. I have never felt that I had to be in one category.

There's plenty of talented women. Why do men take over the important positions? It's simple. Love, family, children - a woman doesn't want to sacrifice all of that.

Women have everything they want, and they've never been so unhappy.

Unfortunately, being a woman in society means that sometimes you have to sort of quell what is instinctually broad and magnificent and magical about you.

Girls are almost always socialized to be perfect: 'Smile, do well in school, don't take too many risks.'

I think that our culture is doing something to women - let's say women in their late 30s and 40s and probably even 50s, - where they really are expected to keep this insane level of fitness and youth. I find that just a real waste of women's lives. I really do think that.