Julia

“Through writing, I feel power for maybe the first time in my life. I don’t have to say somebody else’s words. I can write my own. I can be myself for once. I like the privacy of it. Nobody’s watching. Nobody’s judging. Nobody’s weighing in. No casting directors or agents or managers or directors or Mom. Just me and the page. Writing is the opposite of performing to me. Performing feels inherently fake. Writing feels inherently real.”
― Jennette McCurdy, I'm Glad My Mom Died

“Think back, she asks straight women, to the first time you betrayed your best friend for male attention. Was that natural? Inevitable? Or something demanded of you by the infrastructure of male domination, which fears most of all the absence of female desire, and with it the end of men’s presumed access to women’s bodies, labor, minds, hearts?”
― Amia Srinivasan, The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century

“Each ‘good’ thing Mom says about my ‘natural beauty’ is followed up by its downside, which serves as the justification for its need to be enhanced by a little good old-fashioned store-bought beauty. And since it seems like every single ‘naturally beautiful’ thing about me comes with a downside that needs to be enhanced by store-bought beauty, I’m beginning to wonder if I’m really naturally beautiful at all, or if Mom’s use of the term ‘naturally beautiful’ goes in the same place where others would just use the term ‘ugly’.”
― Jennette McCurdy, I'm Glad My Mom Died

“I tried desperately to understand and know my mother—what made her sad, what made her happy, and on and on and on—at the expense of ever really knowing myself. Without Mom around, I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what I need. I don’t know who I am. And I certainly don’t know what to wish for.”
― Jennette McCurdy, I'm Glad My Mom Died