Justice & Law Quote by Phyllis Diller

Phyllis Diller turns vanity into a booby trap and then steps on it with perfect timing. “My photographs don’t do me justice” sets up the familiar celebrity complaint: the camera is cruel, the lighting is wrong, the public will never grasp your true radiance. Then she snaps the premise in half: “they just look like me.” The punchline is both self-deprecation and a sly refusal to play the glamour game. If the photos “just” look like her, then the real problem isn’t the camera; it’s the expectation that a woman in public is supposed to look like an improved, airbrushed version of herself.

The intent isn’t simply to mock her own appearance. It’s to mock the whole economy of appearances that demands women treat their faces like a public relations campaign. Diller’s comic persona leaned into an exaggerated “unlovely” look at a time when mainstream entertainment rewarded women for being decorative, not disruptive. By claiming the photograph fails precisely because it’s accurate, she exposes how “justice” has been redefined as flattering distortion.

The line also works as a power move. Self-roast can be a shield: if she names the joke first, nobody else can weaponize it. And because she delivers it with a deadpan shrug, she invites the audience to laugh at the absurd standard rather than at her. Diller doesn’t ask for pity or reassessment; she asks you to notice the rigged rules, then enjoy watching her ignore them.