Wit & Attitude Quote by Whoopi Goldberg

Whoopi Goldberg’s line lands because it refuses the polite fiction that Hollywood is a meritocracy with good lighting. She names, with blunt comic timing, the unspoken casting economy: desirability as currency, “a visual” that producers and audiences are trained to reward. The phrasing is deliberately coarse - “lie down and take their clothes off about” - because euphemism would sanitize the point. She’s talking about sex appeal as an industry shortcut, and she’s also puncturing the way women, especially, are asked to pretend they’re not being measured that way.

The subtext is sharper: Goldberg isn’t only describing herself as outside conventional glamour; she’s describing how “conventional” is policed. A Black woman with a nontraditional look, a deep voice, and a comedian’s swagger didn’t slot neatly into the packaged fantasies of the time. So she frames her career not as an inspirational ascent but as a strategy: if the system won’t beckon, you push in. “Work doesn’t come to me; I go out and look for it” is a manifesto of agency, but it’s also an indictment of gatekeeping. Hustle becomes necessary because exclusion is normal.

Context matters: Goldberg broke through in the 1980s with roles that leveraged presence and intelligence over prettiness, then became a rare star who could pivot across comedy, drama, and mainstream entertainment. The line captures that hard-earned pragmatism: ambition without romance, self-knowledge without self-pity, and a refusal to let the industry’s narrow definition of “marketable” write the ending.