to be the sculptor, not the sculpture.
Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid.
—Hedy Lamarr, A much-coveted property pursuant to her elegantly unclad performance in the 1933 film Ecstasy; lovely Lamarr was smarter than she looked.
I dress for women, and undress for men.
—Angie Dickinson. In or out of uniform, TV's leggy Police Woman inspired illicit fantasies.
It is possible that blondes also prefer gentlemen.
—Mamie Van Doren, the other platinum bombshell of the fifties.
I have too many fantasies to be a housewife . . . I guess I am a fantasy.
I've been on a calendar, but never on time.
I'm always running into people's unconscious.
I have never quite understood this sex symbol business, but if I'm going to be a symbol of something, I'd rather have it sex than some of the other things they've got symbols for.
—Marilyn Monroe, dead movie star. Was too much feminine mystique her fatal mistake?
A comparison between Madonna and me is a comparison between a strapless evening gown and a gownless evening strap.
—Kim Campbell, erstwhile prime minister of Canada, criticized for emulating America's sexy boy-toy when she bared her forty-six-year-old shoulders in a pre-election photo.
I had to use ham. I took a piece from the deli platter and rubbed it in my hair. I had to—that fluffy thing was really bothering me.
—Alternative rock 'n' roller Kim Deal, on how to handle a bad hair day when you're way too cool for gel.
We're supposed to be attractive to the male to procreate the species, after all. That's why you've got to wear makeup and you've got to f***.
Women should try to increase their size rather than decrease it, because I believe the bigger we are, the more space we'll take up, and the more we'll have to be reckoned with. I think every woman should be fat like me.
People say to me, “You're not very feminine.” Well they can suck my dick.
—Roseanne, outsized sitcom star known both for her cheeky charm and for the cheeks themselves, revealed to an entire stadium of World Series fans during a 1989 mooning spree.
A diet counselor once told me that all overweight people are angry with their mothers and channel their frustrations into overeating. So I guess that means that all thin people are happy, calm, and have resolved their Oedipal entanglements.
—Wendy Wasserstein, perpetually plump (“I was an elementary school Falstaff”) winner of the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
There's nothing on earth to do here but look at the view and eat. You can imagine the result since I do not like to look at views.
—Famous wife Zelda Fitzgerald, in a moment of Jazz Age angst. Flappers were supposed to be flat, not fleshy.
If American men are obsessed with money, American women are obsessed with weight. The men talk of gain, the women talk of loss, and I do not know which talk is the more boring.
—Marya Mannes, journalist/OSS intelligence analyst. It didn't take her long to crack the nation's conversational code.
I never worry about diets. The only carrots that interest me are the number you get in a diamond.
Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.
When women go wrong, men go right after them.
—Sex goddess Mae West, honored in 1933 by the Central Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists for “popularizing the natural plumpness of the female figure.”
When women are depressed, they either eat or go shopping. Men invade another country. It's a whole different way of thinking.
I'm just a person trapped inside a woman's body.
—Comedian Elayne Boosler. Rejected by the Joffrey Ballet school for being non-bulimic, she became a substantial Showtime star by default.
I deliberately overeat to give my body the . . . most voluptuous contours I can acquire. Growing fatter is one of the most intensely sensuous things that I have ever experienced.
—Margaret Deirdre O'Hartigan, sensuous woman at large.
A woman is as young as her knees.
—British fashion designer Mary Quant, revered by the leggy and reviled by the lumpy for creating, during the sexy Sixties, that very minimal method of covering the gluteus maximus still known as the mini-skirt.
I know there are some nights when I have power, when I could put on something and walk in somewhere, and if there's a man who doesn't look at me, it's because he's gay.
—Super-self-confident movie star Kathleen Turner. If he doesn't leer, he must be queer. (Or could it be that his mama just raised him right?)
Scheherazade is easy; a little black dress is very difficult.
Elegance is refusal.
—French couturier Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, celebrated by modern young women of the 1920s for liberating them from the bods of severely structured clothing and by any number of modern young men as well, for succeeding where they had not.
There are no ugly women, only lazy ones.
—Helena Rubenstein. Hard work made her a makeup magnate.
It's not what you'd call a figure, is it?
—Twiggy, Sixties supermodel famous for her lack of flesh. Spindly but not stupid, La Twig was hip to the fact that less is definitely more (to the fashion media's taste).
My weakness is wearing too much leopard print.
—Hollywood novelist Jackie Collins: often leonine; seldom lionized.
I base most of my fashion taste on what doesn't itch.
—Comedian Gilda Radner. Fortunately, sensitive-skinned Gilda wound up as a Saturday Night Live star and not, like so many other unfortunate females of the polyester-and-pantyhose generation, as a resident of a nudist colony.
I did not have three thousand pairs of shoes, I had one thousand and sixty.
—Imelda Marcos, former first lady of the Philippines, setting the record straight on her vast (but not quite so vast as previously assumed) collection of stilettos, slippers, scuffs, moccasins, mules, platforms, pumps, loafers, loungers, booties, button-ups, espadrilles, high heels, Mary Janes, tennies, golf shoes, and riding boots.
Anyone with more than 365 pairs of shoes is a pig.
—Barbara Melser Lieberman, setting the record straight on Imelda Marcos.
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