Today, feminists everywhere celebrate what would have been Simone de Beauvoir’s 100th birthday. She was Jean-Paul Sartre’s “life partner.” But let’s be perfectly clear: It’s not that she would have needed Sartre, no no, she was indeed independent. No woman ever needs a man. It’s just that articles about her tend to mention her relationship to him straight away, and then segue into her completely unique contributions to feminism and philosophy. One of her beliefs, as per Der Spiegel:
…Beauvoir refused to buy into the notion, considered a matter of course in the bourgeois society of the day, that beauty and intelligence are incompatible.
Though it’s certainly not clear that they always go together, either. Probably need to go on a case by case basis on that one.
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