Daily Inspiration Quote by Mae West

Mae West takes the language of consumer choice and aims it like a wink at masculinity. “Domestic and imported” is shopping talk: meat, liquor, cars. By sorting “men” into the same categories, she collapses romance into appetite and purchase, then dares you to admit that’s always been part of the deal. The joke isn’t just that she likes everyone; it’s that she’s coolly in charge of the marketplace. Men aren’t gatekeepers here. They’re inventory.

The line works because it weaponizes respectability’s own vocabulary. In early-to-mid 20th-century America, “domestic” carries a whiff of the home, the proper sphere women were assigned. West flips it: domestic isn’t a cage for her, it’s just one flavor. “Imported” adds risk and glamour, the promise of elsewhere in a culture that policed female desire but fetishized the exotic. She doesn’t apologize for wanting both; she makes the wanting sound practical, even thrifty, as if desire were as ordinary as reading a label.

West’s larger project was smuggling sexual autonomy past censors under cover of punchlines. The quip’s breezy taxonomy lets her imply voraciousness without saying anything graphic. It’s the classic West maneuver: turn a taboo into a commodity, then smile as if the scandal is everyone else pretending not to shop.