_This newly luanched website is quickly becoming my favourite 'daily site to check' - such ace articles, parties, and fashion spreads to boot, this is one of thier most recent features with the 'Size Hero' Beth Ditto, enjoy, and Check out the website.
"Beth Ditto is a rare breed. A pop star with an opinion, a brain and good personal style. Bella Freud caught up with the remarkable Miss Ditto and finds her, well, surprisingly grounded...
Beth Ditto: Is that a real diamond ring? It’s so pretty the way it’s side by side. Is that an old one?
Bella Freud: Yes, its a 20's one, my husband gave it to me. Even though he was married twice before me somehow...
BD: You got it. Good!
BF: Its good because you can be a real slob then when people notice the ring, especially in shops and especially in Paris they perk up alot.
BD: Would you like some water, still or sparkling? I remember the first time I came to Europe I discovered sparkling water, I thought, what the hell is going on? Do people drink it because they’re thirsty? I mean do you guzzle it?
BF: You can get a craving for it….I am fascinated by how you manage to be so grounded as well as creative and controversial. It’s rare they go together so well. There is nothing moralizing or critical about it. And you seem like you know your mind. Have you always been like that?
BD: Oh yeah, my mum used to call me a little Triceratops. I’ve always seen things through the same eyes.
BF: When you talk you always say things in a straightforward way. You speak up for people without making a huge thing about it.
BD:You face a lot of scrutiny from the punk scene that you come from. I try to balance the punk side of myself. Sometimes interviewers treat you like a politician, they want to hold you to your word like a politician, instead of treating you like a musician and an artist. I think its because I work that way, sometime I do feel more like a politician, not because I love politics but because I feel really drawn to appealing to people in that kind of way.When I was a kid there used to be these leadership seminars for bullies or people who had a lot of power. I was weirded out at first and took it personally, then I realized they wanted me there because I had a lot of influence and they wanted me to influence people in a certain way. I don’t remember anything from the seminars, just that we got to eat fast food instead of school food, chicken filet and waffle fries.
BF: Was there anything in your childhood that triggered off your sense of your own identity, of who you were going to be?
BD: This is why I know that pop culture is so important and why it’s so sad that we have the pop stars we do now- where is that good sense of awesome pop? Where is our Boy George? Where is he now? When I was a kid, Interview was banned. Same old story, same old song and dance. It puts into context the environment I grew up in. We were so cut off from culture where I grew up. The last thing I saw from the outside world- from that world- was Madonna, Michael Jackson, Cyndi Lauper, Boy George - We Are The World. That was my jam when I was like four year old.
Feminism was such a big deal to me from an early age. Southern Women are such a special breed of human , they are so amazing, very strong, carrying the weight of the family at the same time as loving Jesus, and having babies, and working, and supporting the family. At the same time getting no credit, holding it all together, then believing in God when all these horrible things were happening to every woman I think, like rape, incest, abuse, battering.
BF: Were you really conscious of that as a child? Is that because it was going on a lot?
BD: I don’t know a single person it didn’t happen to- I know one person it didn’t happen to – I mean from everywhere. As a 7, 8 year old I remember thinking, why are women always washing dishes on television? I hate doing dishes, why do they look like they love doing that? Who likes to do that? Just things that simple, and seeing boys getting to do things I didn’t get to do, used to make me so mad. One moment was when I had an undershirt, my grandma used to make me a lot of clothes when I started kindergarten, they were all thin, cotton so you had to wear your undershirt. This boy went to the bathroom and took his top shirt off, so I went to the bathroom and took my top shirt off and I got screamed at by my teacher like I was a little harlot that had dirtied the whole room, like I’d done something so bad. I always think about that, how that really made me go, ‘wait a minute’. The problem was, there was no accountability, like heaven was all there was. That made me start to resent Christianity because there was no accountability in real life, it was all in the after life. People literally got away with murder. It was confusing but I always knew I would get out, I always knew I would do something else. When I was 13, 14 I was really close to my friends, who really saved me, introduced me to punk and Riot Girl. I knew I was going to move to Seattle because grunge was really big there. My friends and me were like ‘we’re gonna move to Seattle’. My best friend who I had made the plans with, and who is now married to my brother, had given me this letter for the plane ride 9 years ago. She said ‘I can’t believe your doing it…your going to Seattle’. I’d forgotten that I’d actually said it. It didn’t dawn on me until that moment , I’d never made it my mission. It was sad because I was leaving her behind, she was already with my brother.
BF: It was great that you had voiced it; said it out loud earlier in your life , but then you followed through.
BD: From one really weird place to another! Utter fucking broke assed poverty. It was amazing. We were bright eyed and friendly. We wanted to say hello to everybody in the street.
BF: So what were you wearing in those days? In fact, what was your earliest style influence?
BD: Patty Duke from the Patty Duke show.
BF: How old were you then?
BD: Six. I loved bouffants. I loved getting dressed up, I was really good at it. I wasn’t extremely popular in the sense that we didn’t have money, people weren’t that kind but when prom time rolls around I was the person that people asked to do their hair and make-up. I used to draw on the Madonna mole with mascara. I wasn’t a huge Madonna fan, I was a bigger Cyndi Lauper fan, but it was a lot easier to do Madonna because you just drew on a mole and put like a lace bow in you hair. You couldn’t just shave half your head. I wanted one of those skirts so bad…I like Mary Tyler Moore, I loved her. I just wanted to live in the 60s so bad. If I saw a Cadillac I would block everything out and pretend I was in the 60s as long as I could.
BF: What did you like about Mary Tyler Moore? I can only remember her as being preppy.
BD: She always had amazing glasses, I loved her hair, it was a black and fucked at the ends.
BF: Like Priscilla Presley.
BD: Yes, but smaller. I loved Courtney Love in the 90’s. She was amazing.
BF: What were you wearing then?
BD: Anything. We were seriously so broke, anything I could get my hands on sometimes, even my aunts bras, people would give us bags of clothes. I would be like 12 and be wearing old nursing bras. I think that’s why I liked hair and make-up so much, you could make anything look amazing with hair and make-up. In the South, people love big hair.
(Tara: Time to wrap it up.)
BD: Oh ok. ..
BF: Can I quickly ask you something?
BD: You can ask me anything.
BF: You are so synonymous with fashion now.
BD: Its really weird isn’t it? (Giggle). It’s because I had to make everything look cool. ? jeans, I had to make them look good. I bought my own sewing machine, the best $100 of my life. I was glued to it. I made all my prom dresses and things like that, I loved prom. Most punks were like, ‘Man, prom’s bullshit’, I was like ‘fuck yeah, this is going to be awesome’."
Bella Freud For Ponystep.com.
