This edition first published in 2014 by Conari Press,
an imprint of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC
With offices at:
665 Third Street, Suite 400
San Francisco, CA 94107
www.redwheelweiser.com
Copyright © 1993, 1996 by Autumn Stephens
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. Reviewers may quote brief passages.
ISBN: 978-1-57324-638-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available on request.
Interior by Kathryn Sky-Peck
Typeset in Caxton
Interior illustrations © 2014 iStock.com
Printed in the United States of America.
EBM
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Can We Talk
Garrulous Goddesses
Raving Beauties
Political Animas & Public Enemies
Libidinous Lingo & Tart Retorts
Out & About
Vocal Oracles
Conjugal Confessions & Solitary Digressions
Prolix Professionals
Men, Schmen
Domestic Dissidents
Peeved Eves
Racy Remarks
Aged Sages
Phallus-Free Philosophy
Index
Once we loved Barbie, the dishy doll with the missile-shaped bosoms and the pouty, slightly parted plastic lips. Unfortunately, little Miss Implant didn't have much to say for herself: she was too busy trying on all those cunning size ½ costumes (though I think she did occasionally emit a coy giggle when Ken tried to get cuddly).
Then came Chatty Cathy, flagrantly flat-chested and corporeally quite charmless—but oh, how that baby could babble! We pulled her string and pulled her string, until one sad day her motor-mouth simply sputtered and died, never again to blurt out those startling, solipsistic demands for juice or a journey to the zoo.
Finally, we fell for Madonna, a self-proclaimed boy-toy (though obviously she liked girls just fine too) who proved that you could have mammary glands and a jaw that opens all the way. “Listen,” she said, “everyone is entitled to my opinion.” And just in case we didn't think her smile was smug enough already, she wrapped it around a Coke bottle to prove her point.
This book is for Andrea's daughter, and Margaret's, and all the other little Madonna-ettes who will, I hope, grow up knowing how to do more with their breasts than beat them, and more with their mouths than paint them stop-sign red.
I'm tough, ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay.
I can throw a fit, I'm a master at it.
—Madonna, chameleonesque queen of chutzpah.
The opposite of talking isn't listening. The opposite of talking is waiting.
The telephone is a good way to talk to people without having to offer them a drink.
Success didn't spoil me; I've always been insufferable.
—Satirist Fran Lebowitz, an inspiration to every sarcastic smart-ass who ever got herself booted out of high school.
Besides Shakespeare and me, who do you think there is?
It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.
The Jews have produced only three originative geniuses: Christ, Spinoza, and myself.
—Writer Gertrude Stein, who loomed large in the avant-garde circles of her day, and larger still in the privacy of her own mind.
Just being in a room with myself is almost more stimulation than I can bear.
—Kate Braverman, agitated author of the cult classic Lithium for Medea.
I would live in a communist country providing I was the Queen.
—Stella Adler, Methodic mentor to big screen kings Marlon Brando, Warren Beatty, and Robert De Niro.
(“If she were a character in a Greek play,” one interviewer concluded, “her flaw would be hubris.”)
I have a horror of death; the dead are so soon forgotten. But when I die, they'll have to remember me.
—Emily Dickinson, a poet far too singular to slip anybody's mind.
I now know all the people worth knowing in America and I find no intellect comparable to my own.
—Margaret Fuller. The brilliant Bostonian who wrote Woman in the Nineteenth Century was a shocking exhibitionist when it came to her brain.
The more articulate one is, the more dangerous words become.
—Prolific poet/prosaist May Sarton, a major menace to society.
I have a simple philosophy: Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. Scratch where it itches.
If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me.
—Alice Roosevelt Longworth, one of America's nastiest national institutions.
Show me someone who never gossips, and I'll show you someone who isn't interested in people.
—Broadcast newswoman Barbara Walters, a very caring conversationalist.
Learning to speak is like learning to shoot.
—Professor Avital Ronell, comparative literature specialist, and a self-proclaimed “ivory-tower terrorist.”
The people I'm furious with are the women's liberationists. They keep getting up on soap boxes and proclaiming that women are brighter than men. It's true, but it should be kept quiet or it ruins the whole racket.
—Screenwriter Anita Loos, who maintained that gentlemen were incapable of appreciating either brunettes or the basic facts of life.
I wasn't allowed to speak while my husband was alive, and since he's gone no one has been able to shut me up.
Nobody's interested in sweetness and light.
—God-like gossip columnist Hedda Hopper. With a flick of her poisonous pen, she could write a Hollywood hopeful right out of the picture.
I think if women would indulge more freely in vituperation, they would enjoy ten times the health they do. It seems to me they are suffering from repression.
So long as women are slaves, men will be knaves.
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the strapping spokeswoman for nineteenth-century suffragists.
Be critical. Women have the right to say: This is surface, this falsifies reality, this degrades.
—Tillie Olsen. After twenty years of transcribing other people's words, the long-suppressed author of Silences finally found her own voice.
We are all born charming, fresh and spontaneous, and must be civilized before we are fit to participate in society.
—American etiquette maven, Miss Manners, née Judith Martin, apparently not to the (excruciatingly correct) manner born.
I am terribly shy, but of course no one believes me. Come to think of it, neither would I.
—Carol Channing. Shy, perhaps, but scarcely retiring: in her eighth decade of life, Hello Dolly is still a happening thing.
I personally think we developed language because of our deep inner need to complain.
Reality is the leading cause of stress for those in touch with it.
Delusions of grandeur make me feel a lot better about myself.
—Writer Jane Wagner, the wry collaborative mind behind some of Lily Tomlin's best lines.
Gossip is news running ahead of itself in a red satin dress.
—Syndicated columnist Liz Smith, dedicated to keeping a news-hungry nation apprised of the triumphs, tragedies, and predictable little peccadillos of those who live in (or for) the limelight.
A gossip is someone who talks to you about others, a bore is one who talks to you about himself, and a brilliant conversationalist is one who talks to you about yourself.
—Singer Lisa Kirk, waxing eloquent on the subject of oral emissions.
People call me feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.
—Writer Rebecca West, puzzled (but not insulted) by the F-word.
My goal is to be accused of being strident.
—Susan Faludi, scribe of the stinging Backlash.
I don't have the time every day to put on makeup. I need that time to clean my rifle.
—Henriette Mantel, cosmetically incorrect comedian.
You'd be surprised how much it costs to look this cheap.
Lots of women buy just as many wigs and makeup things as I do. They just don't wear them all at the same time.
It's a good thing that I was born a woman, or I'd have been a drag queen.
—Dolly Parton, rags-to-riches country music mogul. (In her dime-store days, desperate Dolly saved face by rouging her lips with Mercurochrome.)
If you have formed the habit of checking on every new diet that comes along, you will find that, mercifully, they all blur together, leaving you with only one definite piece of information: french-fried potatoes are out.
I'm tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That's deep enough. What do you want, an adorable pancreas?
—Jean Kerr, perfectly attractive playwright whose modest goal was “to make a lot of people laugh and to make a lot of money.”
Taking joy in life is a woman's best cosmetic.
—Rosalind Russell, minimalist Auntie Mame who also suffered from the misconception that an appealing lunch could be fashioned solely from an assortment of cheeses.
Nature has made women with a bosom, so nature thought it was important. Who am I to argue with nature?
—Ida Rosenthal, inventor of the modern brassiere. She figure out how to gently lift and separate the women from the girls.
My husband said he wanted to have a relationship with a redhead, so I dyed my hair red.
—Activist/film star Jane Fonda, capable of changing her colors at the drop of an aerobics sock.
I've never been lifted. But I do like a bit of glamour in the morning.
—Artist Louise Nevelson. She preferred 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.