I never meant to be a sexual object for anyone but my husband. I never thought a picture of my body would be tacked up in men’s bathrooms. I hate men looking at me and thinking what they think. And I know what they think. They write and tell me.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a woman's frustration with being objectified and reduced to a mere physical entity.
In this quote, Lynda Carter addresses the painful reality of being objectified by men, sharing her despair about how her body is perceived and displayed without her consent. She emphasizes that her identity and intentions should be respected, and she feels violated by the way men view her outside the context of her marriage.
In practice
In a discussion about women's rights and body autonomy, one might recall this quote to highlight the issue of objectification.
I'll tell you what it is... just why 'Wonder Woman' worked. Or 'Bionic Woman,' or any of those, really. It was because it wasn't about brawn... it was about brains. And yes, she happened to be beautiful, she happened to be kind of extraordinary in some way, but she wasn't a guy.
'Wonder Woman' is much more than a cartoon character. She's fighting for truth and justice and the secret self that exists in all women and girls. There's a moral fiber and a goodness about her that all women have.
I asked my husband if he was surprised by all the #MeToo stories. 'Yeah, I'm surprised,' he said. Ask any woman, they're not surprised. It's been going on for years.
You can't just make yourself matter and then die, Alaska, because now I am irretrievably different, and I'm sorry I let you go, yes, but you made the choice. You left me Perhapsless, stuck in your goddamned labyrinth. And now I don't even know if you chose the straight and fast way out, if you left me like this on purpose. And so I never knew you, did I? I can't remember, because I never knew.
Society does not need more children; but it does need more loved children. Quite literally, we cannot afford unloved children - but we pay heavily for them every day. There should not be the slightest communal concern when a woman elects to destroy the life of her thousandth-of-an-ounce embryo. But all society should rise up in alarm when it hears that a baby that is not wanted is about to be born.
Where do you come from?"...This is the number one most-asked question in all of South Carolina. We want to know if you are one of us, if your cousin knows our cousin, if your little sister went to school with our big brother, if you go to the same Baptist church as our ex-boss. We are looking for ways our stories fit together.
Listening is a very active awareness of the coming together of at least two lives. Listening, as far as I'm concerned, is certainly a prerequisite of love. One of the most essential ways of saying 'I love you' is being a receptive listener.
Life is a big collaboration - and when you're tackling something that is painful and troubling and is causing you such desperate grief that you think life's not worth living - you need to reach out. To people who will reach back.
No day is safe from news of you.
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