"If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse?" Quotes

“I see birthdays as a reward for having shown up 365 in a row. It's like getting a badge for attendance.”
― Gina Barreca, "If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse?": Questions and Thoughts for Loud, Smart Women in Turbulent Times

“Men fake sleep the way women fake orgasms: to be left alone already.”
― Gina Barreca, "If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse?": Questions and Thoughts for Loud, Smart Women in Turbulent Times

“Power is the ability to persuade stupid people to do intelligent things and intelligent people to do stupid things. This is why power is dangerous.”
― Gina Barreca, "If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse?": Questions and Thoughts for Loud, Smart Women in Turbulent Times

“Boys are rewarded for playing games where they line up by height and then run into walls. Perhaps I'm making that up--or perhaps you should do a Google search for "Guy Runs into Wall for Fun."

Not only do women hold up half the sky; we do it while carrying a 500-pound purse.

From age sixteen to age twenty, a woman's body is a temple. From twenty-one to forty-five, it's an amusement park. From forty-five on, it's a terrarium.

Bring your sense of humor with you at all times. Bring your friends with a sense of humor. If their friends have a sense of humor, invite them, too”
― Gina Barreca, "If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse?": Questions and Thoughts for Loud, Smart Women in Turbulent Times

“When you enter your next relationship, you become the person you split up with.”
― Gina Barreca, "If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse?": Questions and Thoughts for Loud, Smart Women in Turbulent Times

“I will count my blessings when I am in the doldrums, count to ten when I am quarrelsome, and count on my friends when I need a laugh.”
― Gina Barreca, "If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse?": Questions and Thoughts for Loud, Smart Women in Turbulent Times

“Ever notice there are no clocks in stores? It's like casinos; they don't want you to know how much time you've spent dropping your quarters.”
― Gina Barreca, "If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse?": Questions and Thoughts for Loud, Smart Women in Turbulent Times

“My therapist has helped me learn to understand that if you don't unpack your own emotional baggage it's no longer baggage--it's deadweight.”
― Gina Barreca, "If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse?": Questions and Thoughts for Loud, Smart Women in Turbulent Times

“Fate gives us relatives for one reason: so that we have to learn how to deal with people we'd otherwise never know.”
― Gina Barreca, "If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse?": Questions and Thoughts for Loud, Smart Women in Turbulent Times

“But if you believe that your best years are behind you, you've guaranteed they are; I'm going to dance into that good night, with the oldies turned up loud.”
― Gina Barreca, "If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse?": Questions and Thoughts for Loud, Smart Women in Turbulent Times

“Since little-girlhood, we're trained to find the Big Bad Wolf seductive.”
― Gina Barreca, "If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse?": Questions and Thoughts for Loud, Smart Women in Turbulent Times

“From age sixteen to age twenty, a woman's body is a temple. From twenty-one to forty-five, it's an amusement park. From forty-five on, it's a terrarium.”
― Gina Barreca, "If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse?": Questions and Thoughts for Loud, Smart Women in Turbulent Times

“Not only do women hold up half the sky; we do it while carrying a 500-pound purse.”
― Gina Barreca, "If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse?": Questions and Thoughts for Loud, Smart Women in Turbulent Times

“We all enter this world crying. Laughter is something we have to learn”
― Gina Barreca, "If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse?": Questions and Thoughts for Loud, Smart Women in Turbulent Times

“Never use the passive voice. Do not say, 'It will get done.' Say, 'I'll do it,' and then stick to a solid, unwavering deadline”
― Gina Barreca, "If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse?": Questions and Thoughts for Loud, Smart Women in Turbulent Times

“I've been married for a long time and there are days when I still wonder, 'Excuse me, but who is this man?”
― Gina Barreca, "If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse?": Questions and Thoughts for Loud, Smart Women in Turbulent Times

“When the Apocalypse comes, you'll find me pushing Marie Antoinette out of the way and saying, 'Let me eat cake! Forget them; I want the cake! Two helpings! I have some friends with me! Is there coffee with the cake, Marie? I'm just asking.”
― Gina Barreca, "If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse?": Questions and Thoughts for Loud, Smart Women in Turbulent Times

“Increasingly political, assertive, articulate, and outspoken as we age, many of us become, paradoxically, the girls we were once: wild, hearty, courageous, and playful.”
― Gina Barreca, "If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse?": Questions and Thoughts for Loud, Smart Women in Turbulent Times

“There are now skin products supposedly created with 24-karat gold extract. I guess if financial times got really tough, you could always pawn your own head.”
― Gina Barreca, "If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse?": Questions and Thoughts for Loud, Smart Women in Turbulent Times

“Boys are rewarded for playing games where they line up by height and then run into walls. Perhaps I'm making that up--or perhaps you should do a Google search for "Guy Runs into Wall for Fun.”
― Gina Barreca, "If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse?": Questions and Thoughts for Loud, Smart Women in Turbulent Times

“Heaven makes you family, but a new generation of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors can make you friends.”
― Gina Barreca, "If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse?": Questions and Thoughts for Loud, Smart Women in Turbulent Times

“Just because you've become tired of emotion, or outgrown it, doesn't mean it'll be simple to free yourself from it. It must be dismantled, not ignored.”
― Gina Barreca, "If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse?": Questions and Thoughts for Loud, Smart Women in Turbulent Times

“A truly thoughtful lover would not attempt to arouse you with the subtlety of a chimp trying to dial a rotary phone.”
― Gina Barreca, "If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse?": Questions and Thoughts for Loud, Smart Women in Turbulent Times

“Having an unresolved Bad Boyfriend issue is like carrying around credit card debt . . . which can still show up and wreck your rating.”
― Gina Barreca, "If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse?": Questions and Thoughts for Loud, Smart Women in Turbulent Times

“I was raised a Roman Catholic, but it was the kind of domesticated Catholicism that focused mostly on the length of your skirt rather than, say, the depth of your penitential observance”
― Gina Barreca, "If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse?": Questions and Thoughts for Loud, Smart Women in Turbulent Times

“We don't want to settle down anymore; we've been settled, like some western township, and now we want to kick up the dust and tear down the fences. Not only won't we settle down; we also won't settle for less than what we've always wanted: a good time and a fair fight.”
― Gina Barreca, "If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse?": Questions and Thoughts for Loud, Smart Women in Turbulent Times

“I'd say it's time for women to make a stand. And it's far, far easier to make a stand when you're wearing comfortable shoes.”
― Gina Barreca, "If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse?": Questions and Thoughts for Loud, Smart Women in Turbulent Times

“After a certain age, you finally become the indisputable authority on the subject of yourself.”
― Gina Barreca, "If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse?": Questions and Thoughts for Loud, Smart Women in Turbulent Times

“We all enter this world crying. Laughter is something we have to learn.”
― Gina Barreca, "If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse?": Questions and Thoughts for Loud, Smart Women in Turbulent Times