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Gossiping About Lesbian Beth Ditto |
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Written by Carmen Sarjeant for FUSE Magazine
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 The Gossip has been around a while now but with their latest album, Music for Men, the band is crossing the popularity line to include indie music know-it-alls and mainstream pop audiences.
Hailing from Portland, Oregon, The Gossip has a repertoire of catchy songs, eclectic stage presence and Beth Ditto. Front-woman Ditto causes a stir with her performances, dress-sense and body image confidence. Ditto is unashamedly plus-size, outspoken, tattooed, unshaved and refuses to use deodorant. Her larger than life personality has been rewarded with an NME win for ‘Coolest Person of the Year’ in 2006 and nomination for ‘Sexiest Person of the Year’ in 2007. Formally signed to Riot Grrrl-affiliated record label, Kill Rock Stars (recall Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney), The Gossip has reinvented some of the principles that empower women for the current electro-focussed, post-grunge, post-punk era in music.
Beth Ditto has become a modern icon; a fashionista for the out-and-proud generation and plus-size women. Ditto’s opinions about her weight have not gone unnoticed. She has posed nude for several magazine covers and she never lets her size compromise what she wants to wear. She has been criticised for normalising obesity, yet continues to share her confidence in her body, calling herself a feminist. Her attacks on the fashion industry and her demand for there to be plus-sizes in stores like Topshop are confronting but not new ideas:
‘If there’s anyone to blame for size zero, it’s not women. Blame gay men who work in the fashion industry who want these women as dolls. Men don’t know what it feels like to be a woman and be expected to look a particular way. The Beckhams are part of the machine; Paris Hilton is part of the machine.’
By criticising size zero and advocating her size, the healthy weight range for young women is once again overlooked in the media and by Ditto. Nevertheless, she presents herself with intentions to single-handedly overhaul these conceptions in fashion. She has released her own range of clothing for the British store, Evans. In conjunction with the line, a Beth Ditto doll was released.
Ditto is righteous and won’t let the mainstream tone her down. She has criticised the likes of Katy Perry and her ‘I Kissed a Girl’ anthem as “boner dyke” music, adding, ‘I hate Katy Perry! She’s offensive to gay culture, I’m so offended.’
‘She’s just riding on the backs of our culture, without having to pay any of the dues and not being actually lesbian or anything at all. She’s on the cover of a fucking gay magazine’. Ditto, although vocal about almost everything else, is relatively quiet about her relationship with long-time transgendered partner, Freddie.
Some may take or leave Beth Ditto and her public antics. She is centre-stage in performance and in press — but it is The Gossip that has given us music even punks are forced to dance to with their soulful genre-mixing, the androgynous drummer, Hannah Billie (who appears on the cover of Music for Men), the musical genius of guitarist Brace Paine, and of course Ditto’s vocals. Music for Men really is for all and with its release, 2009 is The Gossip’s year.
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