Quotes by Jessica Valenti

I think day care is terrific. Kids get to be around other kids, and theyre playing, and theyre teaching each other. When I was in college, my summer job was being a preschool teacher. I loved it, and after that experience, I said I cant wait to put my kid in day care because I could see how much they loved it.

Feminism isnt simply about being a woman in a position of power. Its battling systemic inequities; its a social justice movement that believes sexism, racism and classism exist and interconnect, and that they should be consistently challenged.

The stereotypes of feminists as ugly, or man-haters, or hairy, or whatever it is - thats really strategic. Thats a really smart way to keep young women away from feminism, is to kind of put out this idea that all feminists hate men, or all feminists are ugly; and that they really come from a place of fear.

The truth is that we dont need everyone to like us we need a few people to love us. Because whats better than being roundly liked is being fully known - an impossibility both professionally and personally if youre so busy being likable that you forget to be yourself.

As I grew up and began identifying myself as a feminist, there were plenty of issues that continued to make me question marriage: the father giving the bride away, women taking their husbands last name, the white dress, the vows promising to obey the groom. And that only covers the wedding.

Wedding fever is one of the scariest diseases I have ever seen.

My problem with the wedding industry started when I studied in college and liked to have the television on in the background, and A Wedding Story on TLC always came on, and Id get irritated that the story of two people making a lifelong commitment to each other could be encapsulated in a half-hour show about the party they throw.