Erma Bombeck Quotes

I find it interesting that 16-year-olds are having plastic surgery. People in their 40s used to think, 'I'm aging, I have to do something about it.' Now children are deciding they don't like the way they look.

I have nothing against people having work done, it is when I hear tale of girls of 16 queuing up to get bigger breasts, that is when I despair.

Outside every thin woman is a fat man trying to get in.

Every time I undress in the locker room of my gym, I see women bearing the scars of liposuction, tummy tucks, breast implants.

I think that people put a lot of worth into looks. Unfortunately, there's a standard that so many people look up to that is unrealistic for everyone's body type.

People are so influenced by the media that they really believe a 38-24-45 plastic-surgery body is normal, and they can't understand why a body would possibly have cellulite or bumps.

Regular women carry pictures of their babies, their husbands, their summer houses. Fat ladies carry pictures of themselves at their skinniest.

When women are excited about a date, they go immediately on a diet, because all women know they are hideously obese.

You know they're just looking for wrinkles and cellulite.

I wanted to lose weight when it was my time to lose weight, not because someone's calling me out for it. I've been called the Fat Kardashian Sister for the past ten years. But I could have gone and gotten gastric [bypass surgery] or done liposuction or whatever and I did not feel the need to do that, and I didn't think - I sincerely didn't think anything was "wrong with me."

Our culture puts a lot of pressure on the idea that a woman's self-worth is defined by her looks. It's just awful. And they also put a tremendous premier on youth, which is so, so debilitating and upsetting to so many women. I don't know why they're so dopey. Seriously. I don't see any problem with that and if you do, you should celebrate it. Don't chop your face up.

I'm a woman, and every woman wants to be skinnier - unfortunately.

It just kills me when these girls look at magazines and wish they could look like that. I try to tell them, 'Nobody looks like that. Everything's airbrushed.'

A woman doesn't care if she hasn't a stomach, provided she looks as if she hasn't.

Beauty lasts five minutes. Maybe longer if you have a good plastic surgeon.

What we do to ourselves to look a certain way is crazy.

The misfortune is that many people, men and women, think that the perfect face has no flaws, no pores in the skin; and that gives unrealistic levels of esteem. Somebody feels they're not right because they haven't got that type of refinement.

Most female models don't have any muscle mass.

I find it funny that people now come up to me and say, 'Wow, you are absolutely gorgeous. I'm like, 'I was beautiful before I lost weight. Egotistically speaking, I thought I was amazing.'

In Hollywood, a normal-size body is unruly.

I go to the gym a lot, and I see these guys, these young actors or models there, really punishing themselves - I mean, just killing themselves. And then I'll see one of them on a billboard, with the artfully messy hair, looking as though it's just natural and easy to have a body like that.

I just think that I'll never have plastic surgery if I'm not in front of the camera. If you make your living selling this thing, which is the way you look, then maybe you do it. But trust me, the minute I'm directing or producing and not starring, I would never even think of it.

I have a figure, and there aren't many girls out there right now who have that.

Sometimes I wish I were just magically a size 6 and I never had to give it a single thought.

'Skinny' is only one body type.