I’ve had a ton of fast-food jobs – it changes your approach to human interaction forever.
BETH DITTOA few years back, when my style was “punk grandma”, I picked up an amazing pair of sandals – orthopaedic ones, with really thick soles. I’ve given them away to a friend now, because these days my look is more “1980s substitute teacher gone wild.”
More Beth Ditto Quotes
-
-
I find inspiration everywhere. I love challenges and my favorite thing is to find something ridiculous and be like “if it’s all that I have available to me, I am gonna make it look the best that I can”.
BETH DITTO -
I wish I could open a piece of my brain and you could see into my memories.
BETH DITTO -
We weren’t idiots, but I didn’t have that access to academic feminism. I had to realize, on my own, that feminism is not just about how far ahead you can get in a job and it isn’t about not wearing makeup. It isn’t about not watching your waistline. I had to recreate the world entirely.
BETH DITTO -
A beautiful plant is like having a friend around the house.
BETH DITTO -
I always was really confident about myself, about my voice, myself as a person, my body, all of those things, but as a songwriter – I just didn’t identify as a songwriter at all.
BETH DITTO -
For my group of friends is Lady Gaga eye-opening? No. She’s a less dangerous version of what was so cool about pop culture in the 80s. Back then it was so gay and so punk in so many ways.
BETH DITTO -
When I moved out of my mom’s house at 18 I was almost as sad to leave her sewing machine behind as anything else.
BETH DITTO -
I mean, if I was living to please people, I’d have never been in a band at all. I wouldn’t have anything awesome around. I’d just be bored.
BETH DITTO -
I’ve had people ask me in interviews what it’s like to have money, but that’s not how it is. I have a middle-class life. I have a room in London but not a house, nor a BMW.
BETH DITTO -
Because I didn’t have any queer, lesbian, female role models I hated my own femininity and had to look deep within myself to create an identity that worked for me. Pop culture just doesn’t hand us enough variety to choose from.
BETH DITTO -
I have no control over what people think of me but I have 100% control of what I think of myself, and that is so important. And not just about your body, but so many ways of confidence. You’re constantly learning how to be confident, aren’t you?
BETH DITTO -
Barack Obama was amazing, but he wasn’t perfect. We all know that. He was the closest thing to perfect America’s ever had. We were basking in the glow. We forgot that there’s always going to be a backlash within a movement every time.
BETH DITTO -
I was always being told off at school. The teachers would say: ‘Everyone’s talking, but you’re the one I can hear.
BETH DITTO -
I worshipped Ethel Merman and I worshipped Ethel Merman a lot. It’s incredible – Ethel Merman was a conventional singer. Her naming her child Ethel Merman, Jr., was, to me, one of the coolest feminist things.
BETH DITTO -
To be thin and to stay really thin, sometimes some people literally do coke all the time. Some people smoke cigarettes instead of eating. That’s crazy. But that’s ‘okay’ because you look healthier.
BETH DITTO -
I was given baby doll toys myself, and they proved a stark reminder that my life was expected to revolve around childbearing – just as my mom’s had before me, and her mom’s had before her.
BETH DITTO -
I have no control over what people think of me but I have 100% control of what I think of myself.
BETH DITTO -
I support love any healthy way you can get it.
BETH DITTO -
I never went to college and I was raised in Arkansas so there wasn’t a lot of academic language being thrown around my house.
BETH DITTO -
There is no rule in the pink-triangle guide to coming out that you must wear a rainbow flag cap and organise a full band parade.
BETH DITTO -
Even talking, I’m super-loud. I could never have that kind of meek, little wispy whimsical lavender and lace voice. It comes from my body. There’s no way I can fight it.
BETH DITTO -
I am tired of spending a little bit of money in a lot of pieces because they keep on falling apart.
BETH DITTO -
This archaic idea – that a woman who is unmarried and childless at 30 is somehow unnatural – will probably always exist, and, like most social standards, it is ridiculous.
BETH DITTO -
I’m constantly thinking about what I’ll do next. I never count on music being a career of longevity. I mean, longevity is key, and I hope that it lasts, but you just don’t know, because it’s not in your hands, you don’t make the decision.
BETH DITTO -
We all seek approval, and our mother’s seal is usually the most important. The nitty gritty is that we have to accept ourselves, even if it is just to be ready for the next cut-down. Mom’s blessing or not.
BETH DITTO -
I’m a feminist, of course, and I feel as if I’m very politically correct, although I do question what’s PC and what’s not – I don’t just accept what I’m told.
BETH DITTO