Mary Beth Patterson Quotes
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I believe I owe all the best parts of my adulthood to embracing my imperfections and showcasing them.
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I certainly know first hand the waste one lady can create through her primping routine, because I am a victim of fashion: to me a day without makeup and a bouffant to match is a day wasted. I love it all - whether it's fancy, cheap or, I'm ashamed to say, even if it's bad for the environment.
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Just like my straight friends, I am repeatedly asked when I plan to have kids, and have been told many times, by various branches of my bloodline, that 'even lesbians can have babies these days.'
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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.
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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.
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When I am made fun of in the press I just remember those days when I'd come home to find that the water had been turned off because my mother couldn't afford the bill. Suddenly, everything feels easier.
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I was always being told off at school. The teachers would say: 'Everyone's talking, but you're the one I can hear.'
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I'm naturally a mousy blonde, so I dye my hair, and my eyebrows would disappear if I didn't get through at least a pencil a month.
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I feel sorry... for people who've had skinny privilege and then have it taken away from them. I have had a lifetime to adjust to seeing how people treat women who aren't their idea of beautiful and therefore aren't their idea of useful, and I had to find ways to become useful to myself.
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My number-one theory in life is that style is proportional to your lack of resources - the less you have, the more stylish you're likely to be.
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A beautiful plant is like having a friend around the house.
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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.
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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'm a great believer in karma, and the vengeance that it serves up to those who are deliberately mean is generally enough for me.
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I've never had a very quiet voice. I tried in choir to make it smaller, and it just didn't work out. And I listened to a lot of soul music when I was growing up on my own accord. But I was mostly into Mama Cass and Gladys Knight, and they all had big voices too; just different than mine.
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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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Reclaiming the word 'fat' was the most empowering step in my progress. I stopped using it for insult or degradation and instead replaced it with truth, because the truth is that I am fat, and that's ok. So now when someone calls me fat, I agree, whereas before I would get embarrassed and emotional.
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Portland is a place where you can find a community as a feminist, a vegan or a fat activist. Artists, musicians, knitters, and filmmakers can all meet like-minded souls. It's proved the perfect place for me and all my punk friends.
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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.
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I shave my body in all kinds of ways, wear tons of eyeliner and dye my hair pink.
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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.
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Aretha Franklin was a teenage mom, a musician who came from an incredibly Christian background, but there was a lot of love, which is really inspiring in a feminist way.
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I work really well under pressure but I really hate doing things on a timeframe.