Ralphie May Quotes

I've had agents tell me, 'You're not gonna be on the cover of anything; you're a catalog girl.' I've had clients tell me, 'You're too fat, and we can't book you any more because you don't fit into the jeans.'

When I try to get work in the US all they say is that I need to lose weight - but I bet they never said that to Mae West.

Most good roles are written for young men. We are fixated on youth. So however much people say there is nothing wrong with being bald, the reality is once the hair is gone, you might not get the parts.

I never weigh myself, but the brutal truth of television is that they don't employ old people or fat people.

People think that, somehow, size makes you uncoordinated or incompetent. There is a lot of size discrimination out there, and I see the difference in the way people treated me when I was 360 pounds versus how they treat me when I'm 290 - from the industry to day-to-day people on the street.

I had so many agents tell me that at size 18, I would never work or work again. I heard, 'Go home and lose some weight.'

We have so many people who can't see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion that the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one!

Our idea of a healthy body is so destabilised that insecure people have come to bolster their own bodies by deeming others - those with fat bodies - less worthy, less capable and less employable.

For a while, I was only being sent fat-girl parts. Seriously? Sometimes I feel like I'm making some kind of radical statement because I'm a size 6.

It's okay to be a fat man. It's prestige and power and all of that. But fat women are seen as just lazy and stupid and having no self-control.

Pretty people aren't as accepted as other people. It's like, 'She's pretty and thin and she's got to have problems. She's messed up.'

People are branded as either 'fat' or 'skinny' from an early age. You sort of never shake it, even if you end up losing weight.

For some reason, they always gave me a fat suit in high-school productions. If there was a character who needed to be robust, they gave me a fat suit, and I put on a silly voice.

People ask if I'm concerned about getting pigeonholed. No one asks, 'Ellen, you've done seven straight roles in a row. Shouldn't you shake it up, do something queer?' There's still that double standard.

I couldn't get roles as bad guys. They could see John Travolta as a gangster but not me, really. But, you know, that's just how things are.

There are guys who are way taller than me, weigh a lot more than me, are stronger than me, not faster than me but all other aspects people get recognized and looked at and opportunities based on how they look. I've been fighting that battle my entire lifetime.

When I started modeling, it was like, 'Oh, she's too dark,' and I kind of looked at them like, 'You're too daft.'

There was a solid six-month period where I was going out on castings and I was laughed out of the room because I'm much more petite than other models.

It's almost comical how un-liberal liberal Hollywood is when it comes to fighting gender and racial bias.

As for body-shaming, there will always be people who will love chubby people and those who will dislike them.

The perception is if you are not 206lbs then you can't be considered main event talent, which is foolish.

I've not been discriminated against, but I can see it happen. And not just race but gender and sexuality, too. It's stereotyping, lazy casting, which is an issue: that people can't see outside the box.

I was called the girl that was 'pretty for a big girl,' 'the fat model.'

I am proud to be called the Queen of Mean, and I never mince my words - especially when it comes to fat people.

I'm fat positive, in that I don't see fat as a bad thing. But what I do see as a bad thing is how I'm treated. I can have the most positive outlook in the world, but that is not going to change how hecklers and people walking down the street are yelling at me.