When We Lost Our Heads

by Heather O'Neill

Guests found themselves frequently asking Marie what she was going to do when she grew up. Of course, none of them actually believed she was going to do anything when she grew up other than get married.

loving everyone is the same thing as loving nobody at all.

There was always a male doctor who was determining what were appropriate activities for young women. Who knew how they decided these things?

It is true they are so difficult. But that’s what makes them beautiful. They don’t want to be only what we make of them. They want the right to be ugly too.

The female body was particularly absorbent when it came to shame. If you wrung out any woman’s body, you would discover it was soaked in shame.

But the impermanence of friendship frightened her then. It was as though she intuited it could not last.

There were girls at every dining-room table performing being good-mannered, so why couldn’t she? There were girls in bedrooms performing desire and submission. There were girls in kitchens performing being hostesses. There were girls in parks performing being coy, delicate flowers or shrinking violets. Was there a girl anywhere in the city who wasn’t performing?

Her idea of what it was to be a woman was being built all over again. You could not be pretty. You could not be cordial. You could not put the feelings of other people above your own. These were all instructions to make a woman weak so that any man could take her down.

The world is terrified of a certain type of monstrous woman. That’s why they invented these ideas of ugly and beautiful. They say we are beautiful now because we are young and stupid. But the more we accomplish and have to say, the uglier we are described as being.”

If women could not control their reproductive organs, they could not be free. There was no use fighting for any other rights if these were not secured. They were prisoners to their own children. They simply could not take up any space in culture. They could not be scientists. They could not be politicians. They could not be artists.

To be alive is to be in a constant state of revolution. These girls would all grow up and come for the vote.