(Mc)Queen Beth Ditto: The Gossip Fronter’s Alexander McQueen Shoot & Interview

Perhaps once a decade, an unconventionally beautiful (read: not thin) artist exerts such an irresistible magnetism as to blow the deadbolts off of the fashion world and disrupt production of the beauty myth. In the early 1990s, the comely voluptuousness of celebrity makeup artist Sharon “Mama Makeup” Gault inspired designers to push her from backstage to the catwalk. The immortal look of club icon Leigh Bowery—with his form-malforming, anthropoid Jayne Mansfield-in-sequined-ski- mask garments—made such a deep impression on fashion that his unlikely influence is still occasionally seen in Missy Elliot videos, and on the runways of Gareth Pugh.

Behold the latest Powerball winner in this beauty lotto: Beth Ditto, lead singer of the Gossip, a 5-foot tall, 200-plus pound openly queer oddball from Arkansas, whose Southern charm, soulful wail, brash self-confidence, naked magazine covers, uncompromising politics (her hit song “Standing in the Way of Control” was written in opposition to efforts to ban gay marriage) and robust sense of humor have inspired legions of pan-continental and pansexual fans—including such immortal fashion titans as Karl Lagerfeld and Kate Moss. A besotted Alexander McQueen, inspired to create a number of designs for Ditto, tells BlackBook: “I have three words for Beth: life and soul.”

A terrific antidote to the misanthropic nausea of the Bush-era hangover, Ditto reminds us that America’s best exports have always been upstarts who pledge, like Thomas Jefferson, “eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”

Talking with Ditto (who purrs like Dolly Parton into her home phone in Portland, Oregon) is a Mary Poppins–style spring cleaning for the mind—clunky old paradigms concerning physical comeliness and gender- identity seem to sail effortlessly into the trash.

Do people tell you all the time that you’ve really opened their minds to broader definitions of beauty?
Girls in general have really nice things to say—especially big girls. It’s mostly men who aren’t as open. I think men fear me sometimes. I played in Greece last summer and, I swear, when I went into the crowd, people actually ran away from me. But things like that make me really happy. You make a decision: if you are going to participate in the music industry and put yourself out there, you have to know that it’s all full of shit.

I read that you had an epiphany while watching a Jerry Springer episode in which there were a lot of big girls wearing bikinis. You realized, then, that society was projecting weird, hostile feelings onto these women.
Yeah, exactly. It was during that moment. I was 16 or 17 and I had always known there was something wrong. I don’t think I’m ugly, but my body looked like these women on TV, and I was just repeating things I’d heard other people say. My friend said he thought those women were cool. And I was like, This [negative attitude] isn’t coming from me. I started to analyze why I felt the way I felt. I have been a self-described feminist since I was probably 12 years old, but there were still things missing: that radical punk feminism which is Riot Grrrl. I started to really adapt to those beliefs.

Did you get angry at society?
I’m always a little irritated with society, but I’m good at laughing at society as well. If you come from Arkansas and have a radical view of life, then you have to have a sense of humor to survive.

There is a lot of power in the shock of being unashamed. A friend told me that flaunting a big girl body in a punk-rock way is kind of a libertine thrill, like a drug.
It’s kind of like a drug… it’s a performance. It’s funny how something so normal and mundane that you see every day—your body—can be controversial. The shock value is intense. It’s like carrying an art piece around with you all the time.

Are you rubbing people’s noses in their own prejudices?
I don’t really care about other people’s prejudices. I don’t take things super personally, unless it’s someone I really respect. It’s really about making an art piece
out of what you’ve been handed. It is about being resourceful. When all you have is an ugly sweater-vest, cut it up and make a really cool skirt out of it! When all you have are these really hateful people, cut them up and make something funny out of them.

You’ve called gay men out in the fashion world for turning women into size 0 paper dolls.
It’s not the fault of gay men. That’s a symptom of the problem… As kids, we’re not allowed to express ourselves, because we’re put in these binary boxes of what our gender is supposed to be.

Which is harder on your brain: being regarded as too scary for primetime, or being regarded as one of the beautiful people?
The hardest thing is being misunderstood. You know, you are a part of this punk world that can be really judgmental, and also this mainstream, conventional world, which is also really judgmental… It’s ironic, because they’re fighting each other, but they end up sounding exactly the same. The hardest part is riding the line, picking and choosing the right things from each side.

It seems as if, right now, you’re at this point where Pat Buchanan and Rachel Maddow are actually agreeing with each other for, like, 10 minutes.
That’s exactly what it’s like! What the fuck is going on?

You have been in a long-term relationship with someone named Freddie, who I have alternately read is a cross dresser, a trans-man and a trans-woman.  For the record, what is the correct way to describe your lover?
Freddie is gender-queer. That’s all there is to it.

Gender-queer? Is that purposefully ambivalent?
It’s more like not focusing on the differences, and creating your own gender for yourself. It’s not always fair that we have to be forced into a gender.

Have you fantasized about a wedding?
I’ve thought about the dress! That’s all I want. I’d want a traditional dress, you know, like the Vivienne Westwood gown in the Sex and the City movie. Amazing! Traditional, but completely crazy.

If everyone was really drunk and there were no social inhibitions whatsoever, would you rather make out with Michelle Obama or Madonna?
I wouldn’t make out with either one of them. I’m not really attracted to feminine. I only like butch.

How do you define beauty?
Context is everything. Kate Moss is beautiful. Whoopi Goldberg is beautiful. It’s just like art—different things are beautiful for different reasons, in different situations, and in different times. Thirty years ago, drag queens were really revolutionary and beautiful. Drag is still beautiful, but people have a much better idea of what it is, now. Back then, it was harder to find things that would suit you. It made you appreciate what you had more; it made things more meaningful. When you think about how someone did drag for the first time, it makes things a lot more striking and remarkable. Context is really powerful. That’s what makes beauty for me—it all depends on context.

The Gossip’s fourth studio album, Music For Men, is due out in August.

BETH’S FAVORITE RESTAURANT: Pho Jasmine, Portland, Oregon.

Photography by Shawn Mortensen.


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