Making no effort to mask the origin of her life advice, mother Colleen McGuire has been adapting lines from the film Steel Magnolias and passing them off as her own quips of wisdom.
Colleen’s daughter Katrina, 22, said she discovered her mother had been stealing lines of dialogue from the film after watching Steel Magnolias for the first time on Lifetime last Saturday afternoon.
“My mother used to adopt a southern accent and say I should never do my own hair because it wasn’t natural and nobody would trust me,” says Katrina. “I realized awhile after that Truvy the same exact thing in Steel Magnolias.”
She adds: “I just thought that’s how moms sounded when they were making a point.”
Katrina remembers a specific instance where her mother quoted Steel Magnolias after when she was battling crippling depression. Upon admitting this to Colleen, she told Katrina, “Honey, time marches on, and eventually, you’ll realize it’s marching across your face.” Katrina laughed at first, but then realized that the quote did not address any of her problems whatsoever and was definitely something Dolly Parton would have said in Steel Magnolias.
After her husband asked which movie theater they should attend one evening, Colleen said, “Oh, honey, God don’t care which church you go to, long as you show up!”. McGuire’s husband Thomas was ignorant to her charade as he had never watched Steel Magnolias.
Pressed on whether she had been passing off lines from Steel Magnolias as her own original colloquialisms, Colleen fired back with, “You are a pig from hell,” which many will remember as a line delivered by Academy Award winning actress Shirley MacLaine as Ouiser Boudreaux.
Other incidents of Colleen’s obvious plagiarism include the use of the line, “The only thing that separates us from the animals is our ability to accessorize,” while helping Katrina dress for prom. When Katrina tried to convince her mother she would not be having sex after the dance, Colleen responded with “A dirty mind is a terrible thing to waste”, which Katrina says made her laugh, lifted her spirits, and gave her a new perspective on her first sexual experience, until she realized that it was a canned response from her mother’s list of Steel Magnolias quips.
“It’s not that I don’t value the advice,” said Katrina, “It just feels disingenuous. Although I guess I should be grateful that my mother cares enough about me to give me advice at all. As Mom would say, ‘Smiling increases my face value.’”
