Simone de Beauvoir along with her iconic quotes – printed on shirts, bags, notebooks and so many countless souvenir items – have made their way all around the world. But deeper than just viral slogans, there are overlooked and powerful Beauvoir’s messages. She translates to words what being a woman in our world means, while challenging the rigid and predetermined roles imposed on women.
More than just aesthetic and merchandise appeal, she gave voice to questions about women being reduced to daughters, wives, mothers and passive figures, showing that these identities are not “natural”, but historically constructed. In The Second Sex and Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, she affirmed that women must resist and reinforce their right to make their own choices, have their own experiences, and exercise their refusals. Understanding truly Beauvoir ideas, it means going beyond her quotes and facing uncomfortable truths about how female identity has been shaped by a patriarchal society that still continues to limit women as ‘the other’.
“One is not born, but rather becomes, woman”
With her most famous quote, let’s start to understand her revolutionary worldview. The idea of woman’s social role as an innate biological factor has always been denied by her, same as the concept of woman’s nature of existence being already predetermined since birth. She defends that turning into a woman is a result of reactions to how society puts pressure on women, shaped by experiences and hopes in the face of social prejudice and oppressive limitations. From a young age, girls are conditioned , since children, into passivity, femininity, nurturing roles through institutionalized means such as family, education and the media.
Once again, this sexist and patriarchal society denies women the right to choose their own path, to be independent, and to fulfill themselves in other areas of life – intellectual, political, creative. Which means that, being a woman is a product of a specific historical, social and cultural context – with female values, behaviors, wishes and fears being shaped by external factors created by others, especially by men, who try to construct how women should be, inferiorizing them with sexist and misogynistic thoughts.
By her existentialist way of seeing life, she promotes that by the same way women can be placed to perform some specific role in society, they can also resist it, being active and changing their history. But at the same time, freedom is limited and consequently becoming something is also limited. Then, it is essential to understand that “becoming a woman” is not only about peacefully accepting what is imposed by a system, but constructing her own figure strongly and resiliently as an answer to prejudice.
“The destiny that society traditionally offers women is marriage”
This quote from Simone de Beauvoir made sense in her era, but also makes sense nowadays. Marriage was viewed as an inevitable happening in a woman’s life, not as an option but as something imposed socially. She argued that marriage is an unequal exchange of services. While women were expected to serve men and take care of the home – sacrificing their personal freedom and becoming dependent of what society expected – men were granted autonomy and power.
It can be understood that, then, marriage becomes a romanticized form of oppression, since a woman is expected to be the wife of a man and the mom of someone, but not an individual with her own autonomous existence. “The curse which lies upon marriage is that too often the individuals are joined in their weakness rather than in their strength — each asking from the other instead of finding pleasure in giving.”, affirms Beauvoir in The Second Sex, reflecting how traditional marriage suppresses female individuality and concretizes dependency on men.
As an extension of the marriage structure, motherhood came as an imposed vocation and the woman’s body began to be seen primarily as an instrument of reproduction. Even if it can represent a woman’s dream and the greatest achievement, it is also used to confine her to the role patriarchal society wants her to play and tries to portray as something predestined — a biological destiny is, in fact, a distorted concept, turning into a whole social construction that limits a woman’s identity.
Beauvoir reaffirms that motherhood can only be meaningful, transformative, and a valuable experience if it is a free choice. Following that, wanting to become a mom is not “natural” or part of feminine essence, but something historically constructed.
It is through motherhood that woman fully achieves her physiological destiny; that is her ‘natural’ vocation, since her whole organism is directed toward the perpetuation of the species.
— The Second Sex
Beauvoir criticized and even ironized this dominant belief — as if a woman’s entire existence could be summarized and justified by motherhood, and her body reduced to nothing more than a vessel for reproduction, erasing the woman’s individual subjectivity.
Religion, science, literature and culture all romanticize motherhood, often portraying mothers as sacred figures. But this ideal also functions as a subtle control mechanism, turning the mother into a symbol of pure and unconditional love, forcing her to sacrifice her individuality in the name of an unrealistic ideal. It’s a way to conceal the invisibility and lack of recognition experienced by mothers, who are often overburdened by the intense and undervalued labor that motherhood demands.
“I did not want to be like other girls. I didn’t want to get married, have children, or stay at home.” This statement from Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter was Beauvoir’s personal narrative, refusing to conform to social traditional gender roles, directly opposing what was commonly expected to define in hundred percent what is to be a woman. For her, motherhood should never be treated as an obligation, imposed by society on every woman. A woman should preserve her freedom to choose whether she wants to have children or not, and should not feel different or selfish for deciding against it.
Beauvoir strongly rejected the idea that gender social role is a biological consequence. Influenced by existentialism, she rejects that someone has a predestined social function, believing that everyone needs to create their life and existence in their own way.
“He is the Subject, he is the Absolute — she is the Other”
The concept of the Other, by Beauvoir’s view, is that women would have a whole life as a shadow of another person, being seen as secondary and just a complement in comparison to men. While man is always the first, being defined by their actions in life, women just follow him, being a type of extension of a masculine figure, since she is defined by their interpersonal relationships, especially with male. This leads Beauvoir to refer to women as “the second sex” because men always tend to have some good characteristics that women do not, implying a type of lack. As a result, a male world has been created, which imposes to women specific and restrictive purposes for her lifes based not on her perspectives, but on what men believe to be great for society.
“A man’s body has meaning by itself, disregarding the body of the woman, whereas the woman’s body seems devoid of meaning without reference to the male”, said Simone. In patriarchal culture, even a woman’s body is a way to complete and just have a meaning within a male figure, with her autonomy and existence on own not being fully recognized even physically, being objectified and used as a tool for reproduction, domesticity, or desire. It can be exemplified by how female sexuality is viewed: it is just a way to respond to the male pleasure and not an legitim valuable female feeling.
“Man thinks himself without woman. Woman does not think herself without man”, Beauvoir uses to explain the idea of alterity. By existentialism, a philosophical perspective adopted by Simone, a man can aspire to happiness and success through his own efforts, and society supports him in achieving autonomy and control over his life. But if a woman has the same objective, it is often condemned by society. Since childhood, girls learn that how they are perceived from others is the most important thing, particularly by men, constructing their identities for external approval, with their subjectivity second place. By this, being a woman is reduced to being synonymous with being someone’s daughter, wife, or mother. From Simone’s own life, it was just like “Marrying well”, “being desirable” and “being a devoted mother” was an obligation, while turning into an intellectual, philosopher and then creating revolutionary feminism, was unthinkable.
“My life has been a movement of liberation. From the very beginning, I wanted to escape”
This quote from Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter expresses how much she promotes self-determination as essential, replacing obedience to how the system works, such as the possibility to choose who wants to be, what wants to do and how, without external ties. In her autobiography, she shows how she resisted the “female world” since childhood, with the early wish to see herself free from the need to follow the traditional roles society impose on women, not wanting to be limited by being the submissive daughter and not even the idealized mom figure.
As a true believer that a person should be able to construct their own identity without the pressure to correspond to what is expected by others, Beauvoir argues “I understood that my salvation must come from myself”. This is a key point about her philosophy thinking: women only can achieve total freedom when she stops being passive and starts to perceive themselves as subjects, and no more an object for others desires – it can become just from herself, not from anyone more, when she takes the responsibility to write her path. By this, independence is a state of existence that results from awakening of consciousness as the agent of turning autonomous. Reflection and then, acting.
In the same perspective, Beauvoir has always valued critical thinking and intellectual development as a way to get emancipated from having limited freedom. For her, self-knowledge is synonymous with being independent, not alienated and also a political, philosophical act. As a consequence of thinking and understanding the situation by having a critical view, women begin to recognize the fake truths imposed by misogynistic lines of thought. Through this awareness, they can come to know themselves and construct an authentic identity — one not shaped by stereotypes, but resisting and refusing to live by references of inherited sexist standards.
“But all day long I would be training myself to think, to understand, to criticize, to know myself; I was seeking for the absolute truth.”, said Beauvoir.
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The article above was edited by Camilly Vieira.
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