Meat Market Quotes

“Femininity itself has become a brand, a narrow and shrinking formula of commoditised identity which can be sold back to women who have become alienated from their own power as living, loving, labouring beings.”
― Laurie Penny, Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism

“Only by remembering to say 'no' will the women of 21st century regain their voice and remember their power. 'No' is the most important word in a woman's dialectic arsenal, and it is the one word that our employers, our leaders, and quite often, the men in our lives would do anything to prevent us from saying. No, we will not serve. No, we will not settle for the dirty work, the low-paid work, the unpaid work. No, we will not stay late at the office, look after the kids, sort out the shopping. We refuse to fit the enormity of our passion, our creativity, and our potential into the rigid physical prison laid down for us since we were small children. No. We refuse. We will not buy your clothes and shoes and surgical solutions. No, we will not be beautiful; we will not be good. Most of all, we refuse to be beautiful and good.”
― Laurie Penny, Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism

“„If all women on earth woke up tomorrow feeling truly positive and powerful in their bodies, the economies of the globe would collapse overnight.”
― Laurie Penny, Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism

“Without the work that women do for free, every western economy would collapse within days.”
― Laurie Penny, Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism

“Society beets to acknowledge women’s hunger. Not just our hunger for the 2,500 calories a day we need to fuel us through full and interesting lives, but our hunger for life, for love, for expansion of our horizons, our hunger for passionate politics, our hunger to take up space and to live and act out of our own flesh.”
― Laurie Penny, Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism