Life's Pleasures Quote by Joan Rivers

Joan Rivers’ line works because it pretends to ask a polite, almost tabloid-neutral question, then detonates it with a punchline that’s structured like a “fun fact.” “Is Elizabeth Taylor fat?” tees up gossip as if it’s a matter for debate; “Her favorite food is seconds” yanks the discussion from bodies to appetite, swapping a medical-sounding judgment for a glib consumer choice. The genius, and the brutality, is that “seconds” is both banal and loaded: it’s what you ask for when you’ve already been fed, so the joke frames excess as preference, not circumstance. Rivers isn’t just calling Taylor heavy; she’s depicting indulgence as a personality trait.

The context is crucial. Rivers came up in a showbiz ecosystem that treated female celebrities as public property, with weight as a never-ending headline and a permissible form of cultural sport. Elizabeth Taylor was an especially potent target: mythic glamour, tumultuous romances, a body that changed over time, and a media machine eager to narrate those changes as decline. Rivers’ comedy didn’t invent that cruelty; it sharpened it, packaging the era’s misogyny into a clean one-liner that an audience could laugh at and feel clever for catching.

Subtextually, the joke is also Rivers talking about power. Taylor’s fame makes her “safe” to hit: too iconic to be truly harmed, yet human enough to be policed. The laugh lands because it confirms what celebrity culture wants from women - perfection, then punishment for aging out of it.