Motherhood Quote by Arianna Huffington

Confidence here isn’t framed as a personality trait you’re lucky to be born with; it’s positioned as a consumer choice. Huffington’s verb, “buy into,” is doing heavy cultural work. It turns self-doubt and judgment into a marketplace transaction: critics (internal and external) are salespeople, and women are the target demographic. That framing matters because it captures how modern insecurity operates less like a private flaw and more like an ecosystem - one fed by media narratives, workplace expectations, and the monetizable anxiety that you’re doing womanhood and motherhood “wrong.”

The doubling of “inner” and “external” critics is strategic. It refuses the comforting myth that the real problem is simply self-esteem. Huffington insists the internal voice is partly imported: absorbed from commentary, comparison, and a culture that treats mothers as public property. Once you see the loop, the task shifts from “fix yourself” to “stop financing the system.”

The phrase “as women and as mothers” is a tell. It acknowledges the split-screen life many women are forced to live: competent professional, emotionally fluent partner, self-optimizing individual, ever-present parent. The subtext is that motherhood doesn’t replace identity; it intensifies scrutiny. “Choices” is also a loaded word in feminist discourse - it nods to autonomy while quietly admitting that choices are judged, ranked, and punished.

Huffington’s context as a journalist and media entrepreneur gives the line extra bite: she’s not only critiquing the culture machine; she’s intimately familiar with how headlines, hot takes, and aspirational branding manufacture the very critics she’s urging women to ignore.