So not every female human being is necessarily a woman; she must take part in this mysterious and endangered reality known as femininity. Is feminini… - Simone de Beauvoir

The younger and healthier a woman is and the more her new and glossy body seems destined for eternal freshness, the less useful is artifice; but the carnal weakness of this prey that man takes and its ominous deterioration always have to be hidden from him...In any case, the more traits and proportions of a woman seem contrived, the more she delighted the heart of man because she seemed to escape the metamorphosis of natural things. The result is this strange paradox that by desiring to grasp nature, but transfigured, in woman, man destines her to artifice.

Du jour où il nait, l'homme commence à mourir; c'est la vérité qu'incarne la Mère.

all success cloaks a surrender