Daily Inspiration Quote by Sally Rand

A small sentence with the snap of a slapback comeback, Sally Rand's line is doing two jobs at once: announcing desire and denying exile. "I like boys" lands with the blunt, almost vaudevillian frankness of someone who built a career on turning scandal into ticket sales. It refuses the coyness expected of women in public life, especially a performer whose fame (and infamy) depended on bodies, spectacle, and the policing of both.

Then comes the defensive pivot: "I am not foreign; I was born and raised in Hickory County, Mo". Rand doesn't argue morality; she argues belonging. The subtext is clear: if you're going to treat my sexuality as suspect, at least don't tack on the other classic American suspicion, that I'm an outsider. In an era when "foreign" could mean immigrant, un-American, sexually deviant, or simply too cosmopolitan, she answers with the most unglamorous credential possible: a rural Missouri origin story. It's a strategic retreat to hometown authenticity, a move that lets her keep the first sentence standing.

What makes it work is the way it exposes the audience's bias without pleading. Rand knows the game: America will forgive a lot if you can be filed under "one of us". So she dares you to reconcile the two halves - the unapologetic appetite and the insistence on domestic roots - and in doing so, she shows how easily desire gets treated as a kind of foreignness.