Feminism:

“We need to reclaim the word ‘feminism’. We need the word ‘feminism’ back real bad. When statistics come in saying that only 29% of American women would describe themselves as feminist - and only 42% of British women - I used to think, What do you think feminism IS, ladies? What part of ‘liberation for women’ is not for you? Is it freedom to vote? The right not to be owned by the man you marry? The campaign for equal pay? ‘Vogue’ by Madonna? Jeans? Did all that good shit GET ON YOUR NERVES? Or were you just DRUNK AT THE TIME OF THE SURVEY?”

How To Be A Woman

Self-care:

“Pretend you are your own baby. You would never cut that baby, or starve it, or overfeed it until it cried in pain, or tell it that it was worthless. Sometimes, girls have to be mothers to themselves. Your body wants to live – that’s all and everything it was born to do. Let it do that, in the safety you provide it. Protect it. That is your biggest job. To protect your skin, and heart.”

Caitlin Moran’s powerful open letter to teenage girls (Stylist)

Female sexuality:

“When I was 13 and I had a very rich imagination, one of the first books I read was a book called My Secret Garden, by Nancy Friday. She was a sex researcher who interviewed thousands of women about their sexual fantasies. They were incredible psychedelic, synesthesiastic, strobing, colorful, insane things—women talking about having sex with wolves or turning into gigantic robots or putting whole cities inside them and using them as a dildo. It was like, woah, this is telling me that female sexuality is very different from male sexuality. All we usually see is male sexuality, female sexuality tempered through the male gaze, or the kind of female sexuality that we feel comfortable admitting in a male-dominated world. Women have to go, ‘Yeah, I have lesbian fantasies!’ or ‘Yeah, I’d have anal sex!’ but you never hear them going, ‘I have a dream where halfway through, my lover turns into a river that’s flowing out through the top of my head and then I assume godlike status over the universe and rub clouds across my nipples,’ because they would feel foolish and weird, and also like they wanted too much. I mean, that’s the other thing: men come once and that’s it. Women can come for hours. And so I think women are very conscious of trying to limit their sexuality and make it seem like they don’t want too much.”

Caitlin Moran on the working class, masturbation and writing a novel (Longreads)

On sex, beauty and self-care: brilliant Caitlin Moran quotes to live your life by