Quotes About Stigma

I did 'Kidulthood' and 'Adulthood,' and that's what people wanted and expect me to always do. They want me to do 'hood films and be the guy swinging baseball bats and saying 'Yo Blood' and beating up others in the street.

Being a sex symbol was rather like being a convict.

I have never apologised for my assets or for being a sex symbol.

I was in Asia and people asked me about being considered sex symbol. I don't know if that's good or not, because where I come from, sex isn't something you're allowed to talk about.

Everywhere in TV and films, actors who become mothers are treated differently. Suddenly, people will be like, 'Oh, she's a mom, so she can't play a sex symbol role.'

Asian men specifically have not been portrayed as the leading man or sex symbol.

You can have Asians being leading men that are sex symbols. You can have leading women powering through.

I feel people think I'm almost like a robot - like an android... I just don't really get portrayed as someone who has feelings or who is sympathetic... like a self-absorbed ice queen.

Ironically, heavier comedians, actors, and the characters they play are actually more sympathetic, and easier for audiences to identify with, than the svelte.

When our bodies are sick and people extend their sympathy, bring us soup, offer up solutions. When our minds are sick, people tend to shy away from you, be afraid, or call you outright crazy. I'm fascinated by the way society and individuals view mental illness, and most of my shorts comment on that.

Any other illness, any other disease that we're faced with, there's sympathy and understanding. We get help for those. With mental illness, our go-to is to categorize them as, 'Oh, they're crazy,' to belittle the problem.

Any other illness and you have time off work, but there is a lot of stigma around mental illness. It's frightening to talk about it. The people suffering don't want sympathy.

AIDS had won gays sympathy; they no longer seemed the privileged brats that the general populace had resented in the 1970s.

Having a baby is a disaster for your career. I don't think there's any sympathy.

I have buckets of sympathy for the obese, often subject to cruelty, ridicule, denunciation, and contempt.

I don't really have Down's syndrome; I just have a slight case of it.

Back in the early '40s, they used to call Down syndrome infants and babies 'mongoloids.' It's very hard for parents.

People know you as an actor, and labels are so comfortable for people. That syndrome is always hard to get past.

When people think of chronic fatigue syndrome, they imagine someone simply sleeping a lot or who's always tired. The stigma from that name, and the name itself, desperately needs to change. In reality, sleeping doesn't mean rest at all, and it's never enough.

Believe me, when an actress is told that her very name is synonymous with bad acting, she's had it.

Sometimes you do not see white faces when you think of poverty. That leads to lots of stigmas, systemic racism and all that.

Being a Southern person and a blonde, it's not a good combination. Immediately, when people meet you, they think of you as not being smart.

He sometimes wondered about depression and anxiety and how people called them mental illness. It made no sense. How could somebody look out at the wide world and not have an anxious or depressed reaction?

Jonathan sighed. The price of being misunderstood, he thought. They call you devil or they call you god.