Sophia Loren has been credited with saying many celebratory things about life–the one that most people (mainly fat chicks) like to wield whenever possible is “Everything you see I owe to spaghetti.” But arguably her most celebratory quote is an axiom that tends to get mired in other isms she’s touted about food and body. That is, of course, “There’s no pleasure in working if you don’t do the things you want to do.”
Though it may have taken Loren a very long time to apprehend this little truism herself (considering she got one of her earliest starts in “cinema” having to show the goods as an odalisque), she gradually earned the dues that would make her the Academy Award-winning, married to a non-bigamist actress we all eventually came to know and love. Once she asserted her dominance in the profession, it was quite easy to start saying no to lesser (read: topless as opposed to tasteful) work. And in so doing, she found the pleasure in working that many of us can only strive for until our dying day–or instead, die as a result of performing low-paid tasks we despise.
