I never worry about diets. The only carrots that interest me are the number you get in a diamond.

In this quip, Mae West plays on the homophone “carrots/carat,” pivoting from the language of dieting and health food to the language of luxury and jewelry. The joke encapsulates her public persona: unapologetically sensual, resistant to moralizing self-denial, and quick to turn conventional expectations about women’s bodies into a punchline. By dismissing “diets” and valuing “carats,” she satirizes both the era’s pressure on women to regulate appetite and the social prestige attached to wealth and adornment. The line’s sparkle lies in its double meaning: it is simultaneously a rejection of asceticism and a celebration of material glamour as a form of self-definition.