I’m not that interested in female superheroes.
If I had to choose between the band or the friendships, I’d choose the friendships at this point.
Not to rag on myself, but when people say, ‘What does it feel like to be an icon?’ I’m like, ‘My dog does not think I’m an icon, my cat does not think I am an icon, my cousin does not think I am an icon.’ I have a really lovely group of friends, and I just don’t think about it.
Feminism rotates between backlash and interest. And the cool thing about the Internet is that it’s allowing women more access to their own history. Part of the problem before the Internet was that we didn’t know which books to read. Someone had to tell you.
When you’re a musician and you go out onstage, and you’re someone who loves attention, you are going to become a role model to some extent.
There are so many great artists that are doing interesting things, that I don’t want to focus on boring people.
Since I loved underground music, I tried to carve a space for feminism within it. Those were my hopes.
Popularity is totally overrated.
People have always had these weird things about how you have to be really good looking to be a singer.
It’s unexpected for women’s issues to be brought up in places other than women’s centers on college campuses or crisis places.
If people are like, ‘Oh, you’re an icon,’ then whatever. But who thinks of themselves like that? It’s not like I have posters of myself on the wall.
I’m just working and having a good time and seeing what develops, which is so awesome, because you don’t know what’s going to happen, and I’m letting myself do that a lot more than I ever have.
While sexism hurts women most intimately, it also damages men severely.
I didn’t go to high school, I didn’t go to college, I didn’t have women’s studies. All of my feminist ideals and education have been built around art and my friends and community. And so it’s still growing.
A lot of artists are just really stupid about money, and it’s really hard to find somebody who kind of thinks of shuffling money around and doing business as an art.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that things are a lot more permeable. It’s not so black and white: not every journalist is a jerk.
I wouldn’t want to play Miss Hannigan. I’m not a villain. She’s mean to little children! I can’t do that. That would disrupt my brand.
Every band I’ve been in, it’s just become my total life. I feel like a child star – I’ve missed out on so much.
I think that it’s so powerful for me to go see someone like Bridget Everett at Joe’s Pub and watch her weave her songs in and out of these funny, tragic stories – you can talk and sing and it’s not this horrible offense, you’re going to get thrown in artistic jail.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a woman yell that at me, but women have yelled mean things at me as well.