Daily Inspiration Quote by Vivienne Westwood

Westwood’s line has the sly sting of a compliment that doubles as a rebuke. Coming from a designer who made her name by weaponizing fashion against polite society, she’s doing something similar here: praising women’s historical force while needling a movement she thought could forget its own lineage. The key move is the reversal. Instead of accusing patriarchy of erasing women (the standard feminist charge), she suggests some feminists erase women, too, by acting as if power begins at the moment of protest.

The intent reads as provocation, but not mere contrarianism. Westwood came up through punk, where style was an argument and “authenticity” was always under interrogation. In that context, her statement frames feminism as vulnerable to amnesia: if your story starts with exclusion, you can miss the ways women have shaped politics, labor, art, family economies, and everyday survival in forms that don’t look like formal authority. She’s pointing to influence as a fact, not a consolation prize.

The subtext is thornier. By emphasizing “role” and “extent,” she risks sliding into a familiar trap: celebrating women’s impact without naming the systems that made that impact harder, less credited, and more costly. It’s a statement that flatters “women in history” while side-eyeing contemporary feminist critique as insufficiently nuanced.

Westwood’s larger brand helps explain the posture: she liked her activism unruly, aesthetic, and personal. This quote reads like that sensibility applied to politics: don’t just fight the story you’re given; refuse the narrow version of your own.