"The more aware a man is of a woman's body, the better. He needs to know he has to tend to a woman. She might not always return the favor, but a man always has to tend to a woman first"
About this Quote
But the phrasing does a lot of ideological work. “Aware of a woman’s body” frames female embodiment as the central site of male responsibility and expertise - not her mind, not her autonomy, not her stated preferences, but her body as an object to be read correctly. “Tend” is a loaded verb, borrowing from caregiving and maintenance; it casts the woman as someone to be managed, soothed, or serviced. It’s nurturing, but it’s also paternalistic.
The sharpest subtext is in the asymmetry. “She might not always return the favor” normalizes imbalance, then locks it in as a moral rule: “a man always has to…first.” That “always” turns what could be situational consent-and-communication into gendered obligation. In a post-#MeToo landscape that’s trying (messily) to replace entitlement with negotiation, Bilson’s sentiment reads as a compromise: chivalry as sexual ethics. It’s well-meaning, but it risks swapping one rigid template for another - replacing male selfishness with male duty, rather than centering mutuality and explicit exchange.
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Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Bilson, Rachel. (2026, January 15). The more aware a man is of a woman's body, the better. He needs to know he has to tend to a woman. She might not always return the favor, but a man always has to tend to a woman first. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-more-aware-a-man-is-of-a-womans-body-the-159525/
Chicago Style
Bilson, Rachel. "The more aware a man is of a woman's body, the better. He needs to know he has to tend to a woman. She might not always return the favor, but a man always has to tend to a woman first." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-more-aware-a-man-is-of-a-womans-body-the-159525/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The more aware a man is of a woman's body, the better. He needs to know he has to tend to a woman. She might not always return the favor, but a man always has to tend to a woman first." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-more-aware-a-man-is-of-a-womans-body-the-159525/. Accessed 8 Feb. 2026.
