Karen Elson Quotes

I don't know what it means to be a sex symbol. When I look myself on a magazine cover I don't see it as me, but as someone painted, fluffed, puffed and done up.

I was on the cover of a lot of magazines, and there were compliments about beauty and fashion and what I was wearing. Man, if you get locked into that, you can lose your freedom as an actress.

Pretty That's what I am, I guess. I mean, people have been telling me that's what I am since I was two. Maybe younger. Pretty as a picture. (Who wants to be a cliché?) Pretty as an angel. (Can you see them?) Pretty as a butterfly. (But isn't that really just a glam bug?) Cliché, invisible, or insectlike, I grew up knowing I was pretty and believing everything good about me had to do with how I looked. The mirror was my best friend. Until it started telling me I wasn't really pretty enough.

It's hilarious to be considered a sex symbol. In school I was a beanpole with a nose I hadn't grown into. Being thought of as sexy makes one employable, but it's not going to last forever, so I try not to think about it. It's like something that exists outside of me.

For most women, whether you're an actress or whatever you do, there is this pressure in society and within the world to look a certain way, dress a certain way, act a certain way, say certain things, and be this idea as opposed to being a person.

My opinion about myself is so based on what other people think of me.

It is said that no star is a heroine to her makeup artist.

I just kind of opened up and said, 'I feel like a rag doll. I have hair and makeup people coming to my house every day and putting me in new, uncomfortable, weird dresses and expensive shoes, and I just shut down and raise my arms up for them to get the dress on, and pout my lips when they need to put the lipstick on.'

Modeling is basically 'Buy more stuff! Don't you want some more stuff? It will make you look ten years younger and men will like you!' If I'd wanted to be a salesperson, I would have got a job selling.

It always amazed me that people believed I was this beautiful object.

Beauty was never really my trip. Maybe those roles are attracted to me?

I'm not a prettier everywoman. I am an everywoman that they clean up awfully well for T.V.

I never cared about modeling. As a model, you're powerless.

You have to find out who you are aside from what the media say you are. If you've become reliant on them for kind of a sense of self, then you're really screwed.

I'm still figuring out why people would want to look at me. Maybe it's generic beauty, but it's weird to be valued for something I was born with.

No one could possibly look all the time like my photographs. It is dreadfully hard to live up to them. They stare at me everywhere.

Fame is damaging when people become reliant on it for their sense of self, and their identity, when fame is linked to how you see yourself.

The belief that we are what the media says we are, what people perceive we are, is soon to be what we think we are. We are treated based on this warped perception. It is hard to get away from it.

Directors, producers can make you look good or make you look bad.

I don't want to have to be pretty. I don't want to have to be adorable.

I didn't realize that everyone was so attracted to my hair. I thought, well what about my music?

I have never lived in a time when people haven't told me what I look like.

With acting, if you audition terribly, at least you know, 'I messed that up. I was horrible. That's why I didn't get the job.' With modeling, it's like, 'I'm not cool this year; therefore, I'm unemployed for a while.' With modeling, it's just, either you're liked, or you're not.

I've always hated modeling. It's superficial and fake, and I hate to have to care about what I look like. I get a pimple and freak. The whole business is all about selling beautiful girls' faces and bodies, so how can there be anything intelligent or nice about that except for the girl who makes money?

I've not had a deliberate image makeover.