Portland is a place where you can find a community as a feminist, a vegan or a fat activist. Artists, musicians, knitters, and filmmakers can all meet like-minded souls. It’s proved the perfect place for me and all my punk friends.
BETH DITTOI was always being told off at school. The teachers would say: ‘Everyone’s talking, but you’re the one I can hear.
More Beth Ditto Quotes
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I’m naturally a mousy blonde, so I dye my hair, and my eyebrows would disappear if I didn’t get through at least a pencil a month.
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I was given baby doll toys myself, and they proved a stark reminder that my life was expected to revolve around childbearing – just as my mom’s had before me, and her mom’s had before her.
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I worshipped Ethel Merman and I worshipped Ethel Merman a lot. It’s incredible – Ethel Merman was a conventional singer. Her naming her child Ethel Merman, Jr., was, to me, one of the coolest feminist things.
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I said to my teacher, ‘I can’t be a singer because I’m not pretty enough, and I’m fat.’ And she looked at me and said, ‘Tell that to Nell Carter, babe.’ That changed my life forever!
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I was always being told off at school. The teachers would say: ‘Everyone’s talking, but you’re the one I can hear.
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I’m 90% performer, 10% musician. I’ve always said that Gossip are a band I would go see, not a band I would listen to.
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You know how people love to glamorize poverty? There’s nothing glamorous about it. But it did make me really creative. Those days, I was literally taking t-shirts in the day and sewing them back together to make dresses for the night.
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Do I ever think Gossip will be really massive in America? No, I don’t think it’ll happen – and that’s fine. It’s kind of nice because I get to experience everything at once. I get to come home and it not be weird, like in Paris or something. It is nice to be completely anonymous.
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I really worshipped Mama Cass a lot. Mama Cass, who was really fat and she didn’t lose weight. Yeah, she went on diets but for the most part of her life and the better part of her career she was a big person.
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I’m like cheddar: Yes, other cheeses are more ooh la la, but I’m strong, mature, and oh so delicious.
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Sometimes love can mean letting go and loving each other from a distance. Maybe that’s what you’re feeling?
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When I was a teenager I would lock myself in the bathroom for hours, bouffanting my hair like Patty Duke and trying to recreate Barbra Streisand’s flawless eyeliner, only to comb it all out and wash it all off before stepping out into the world a butchish bisexual teen.
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I have a very good relationship with myself. My favourite quote is, “What you think about me is none of my business.”
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I was born fat and have always been, which was just fine and even healthy and cute until I turned ten or so. Puberty hit like a hurricane and brought a new set of rules. All of a sudden it was my fault I was chubby.
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True love is about being able to accept raw emotions, no matter how difficult.
BETH DITTO