Barack Obama was amazing, but he wasn’t perfect. We all know that. He was the closest thing to perfect America’s ever had. We were basking in the glow. We forgot that there’s always going to be a backlash within a movement every time.
Just like my straight friends, I am repeatedly asked when I plan to have kids, and have been told many times, by various branches of my bloodline, that “even lesbians can have babies these days.”
As with most phobias, the fear of flying does make some sense, but if ever there was a fear worth quashing then this is it. After all, life is short, and there’s a great big world to explore out there.
I find inspiration everywhere. I love challenges and my favorite thing is to find something ridiculous and be like “if it’s all that I have available to me, I am gonna make it look the best that I can”.
High school wasn’t so bad though because, by then, I had worked out that there were far more nerdy kids and poor kids than there were rich, popular kids, so, at the very least, we had them outnumbered.
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.
To be thin and to stay really thin, sometimes some people literally do coke all the time. Some people smoke cigarettes instead of eating. That’s crazy. But that’s ‘okay’ because you look healthier.
I think it’s really cool that there are people like Adele on the cover of ‘Vogue’ and ‘Rolling Stone,’ and like I think it’s really important that people are talking about your body, because if they don’t, then you’ll never be able to break that barrier.
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!
For my group of friends is Lady Gaga eye-opening? No. She’s a less dangerous version of what was so cool about pop culture in the 80s. Back then it was so gay and so punk in so many ways.
My size has helped make me an amazing performer too. The cliche of the Funny Fat Friend: I absolutely was that character – I am that character… It’s a complicated bag of tools I acquired, and I’ve put them all to work onstage.
I’m constantly thinking about what I’ll do next. I never count on music being a career of longevity. I mean, longevity is key, and I hope that it lasts, but you just don’t know, because it’s not in your hands, you don’t make the decision.
I knew that if I wanted to stop being a pushover I had to get comfortable with small rejections myself. That took some work, but because of it I can now say no to other people with a clear conscience.
Products are a must – full stop. I’m sorry to say it, but that bob won’t look so sleek on its own – you need a little help. It doesn’t have to be the high-end stuff that they sell in the salon. Products you find in the supermarket are just as good, and sometimes better.
I thought to be feminine was to give in to straight culture, or the beauty standard, but in my heart I had a flair for fashion and style. They were passions I kept secret because I didn’t understand I could love clothes and hair and makeup and still like girls.
I always was really confident about myself, about my voice, myself as a person, my body, all of those things, but as a songwriter – I just didn’t identify as a songwriter at all.
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.
This is how I feel about everything that’s out of your control: once you make a record, it’s not yours anymore. There’s nothing you can do. It’s the way I feel about political movements – both of those things grow on their own.
