I can take care of a house, and some people I meet, I think, ‘You don’t even know how to make a bed.
BETH DITTOBarack 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.
More Beth Ditto Quotes
-
-
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.
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 -
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!
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 -
As a kid, I was always mad – just noticing the women at Thanksgiving, running around the kitchen, while the men were watching football. For one, I don’t want to cook, and for two, I hate football. I was stuck in the middle.
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 -
I love Vivienne Westwood. Her work is so interesting, you can always find something that’s great and fits you.
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 -
Aretha Franklin was a teenage mom, a musician who came from an incredible Christian background, and where there was a lot of love, which is really inspiring in a feminist way.
BETH DITTO -
I’m on a diet. It’s very strict: all hot dogs. Just sausages, constantly. It’s working out – I’ve gained fifteen pounds!
BETH DITTO -
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.
BETH DITTO -
I have a lot of feminist idols. My favorite thing about growing up in Arkansas – well, not favorite but something I’ve always felt grateful for – was that I really had to dig for what I could. There was no Internet. There wasn’t tons of feminist literature floating around.
BETH DITTO -
I’m shameless, and I love a pun. There’s a lot of Beth puns.
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 -
You know how people love to glamorize poverty? There’s nothing glamorous about it. But it did make me really creative. Those days, I was literally taking t-shirts in the day and sewing them back together to make dresses for the night.
BETH DITTO