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 DITTOI can take care of a house, and some people I meet, I think, ‘You don’t even know how to make a bed.
More Beth Ditto Quotes
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I support love any healthy way you can get it.
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My size has helped make me an amazing performer too. The cliche of the Funny Fat Friend: I absolutely was that character – I am that character… It’s a complicated bag of tools I acquired, and I’ve put them all to work onstage.
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I said to my teacher, ‘I can’t be a singer because I’m not pretty enough, and I’m fat.’ And she looked at me and said, ‘Tell that to Nell Carter, babe.’ That changed my life forever!
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We have to stop this idea that we have to be a certain shape.
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I’m passionate about color. My best friend and I sit and look at Pantone books for fun.
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If you have a therapist who agrees with your every word, then your brain isn’t getting proper exercise.
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I wish I could open a piece of my brain and you could see into my memories.
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I never said I wanted to be a singer for the rest of my life.
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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.
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I’m like cheddar: Yes, other cheeses are more ooh la la, but I’m strong, mature, and oh so delicious.
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The thing about being on the majors, from the beginning, going into this, I was like, “I’m not going to be treated like a factory,” because that’s never the way it was done before.
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Girls are taught to sing high and pretty, like Antony, not low and from the guts like Nina Simone. But we’re slowly trying to change that. There are so many things we’re not told growing up, and it’s our true feminist responsibility to take the truth to the people who need to hear it.
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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.
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I have been 130 lbs. as well as 215 lbs. I have had blond, strawberry blond, green, pink and purple hair, and none of that has ever exempted me from having lewd comments flung at me in the street.
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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?
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When I was a teenager I would lock myself in the bathroom for hours, bouffanting my hair like Patty Duke and trying to recreate Barbra Streisand’s flawless eyeliner, only to comb it all out and wash it all off before stepping out into the world a butchish bisexual teen.
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There is no shame like poor shame. It can make you warm and charming, bitter and resentful, all at once.
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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.
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I have learned so much making first collection that I am excited to use all of it towards making the next one even better! It’s been an amazing learning curve and experience.
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I’m 90% performer, 10% musician. I’ve always said that Gossip are a band I would go see, not a band I would listen to.
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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.
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This is how I feel about everything that’s out of your control: once you make a record, it’s not yours anymore. There’s nothing you can do. It’s the way I feel about political movements – both of those things grow on their own.
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Life is not about creating an unreal existence. People should be challenged to find something cool about the mundane.
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Instagram is a Roman arena of insults. Everyone is a lion, but it is fun.
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A weird thing about Gossip that I’ve always said: “If I weren’t in this band, I would never listen to it.” But I would go see it. It’s a band you would go see that you don’t necessarily listen to.
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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