Daily Inspiration Quote by Mae West

Mae West slips a sex joke into a proverb and dares you to pretend you missed it. “Cover a multitude of shins” riffs on the biblical line “charity shall cover the multitude of sins,” swapping moral bookkeeping for wardrobe logistics. The gag isn’t just the pun; it’s the way she drags lofty language down to the hemline, exposing how quickly “virtue” becomes a matter of presentation. In West’s world, respectability is a costume, and the audience is complicit in treating fabric as ethics.

The specific intent is classic West: puncture prudishness while keeping a grin. Long dresses were culturally coded as modest, proper, feminine in the approved way. West doesn’t deny that code; she weaponizes it. By relocating “sin” to “shin,” she suggests that what society polices isn’t just behavior but visible body parts, the small flashes of leg that could be read as sexual signal or social transgression. The subtext lands as: if you want to look “good,” sometimes you just need better coverage, not better character.

Context matters. West built her fame in an era of censors, stage-to-screen sanitizing, and moral watchdogs eager to regulate female sexuality. Her comedy survives that pressure by being slippery: it’s innocuous enough to pass, pointed enough to sting. She’s not praising long dresses; she’s laughing at the entire idea that decency can be measured in inches of cloth.