Gossip
Japan has a problem with fat people. So, asks indie-rock icon Beth Ditto, what else is new?

From left: Hannah Blilie, Beth Ditto and Brace Paine

Courtesy of Smash

Since UK rock bible NME dubbed queer, fat singer Beth Ditto the “Queen of Cool” and slapped her rippled, naked bod on its cover this spring, indie-rock band Gossip have been the subject of incessant interest.

Granted, NME is using any means possible to assert its continued relevance in the internet era. Yet the magazine was only recognizing the Portland, Oregon trio’s remarkable success in Europe, compared to its own country where it remains largely underground.

Why are outsider American bands like Gossip and the Scissor Sisters finding larger audiences in Europe? “Why was Jimi Hendrix more popular? Why were the White Stripes more popular?” asks Ditto rhetorically when reached at home in Portland. “I think there is greater acceptance of difference; they almost embrace and encourage the weird. People have a different idea of what is good and acceptable there, and it’s not based on morals. They are more willing to take a chance on things that might be subversive.”

Ditto sounds bemused by the wave of attention it’s generated only now in the ninth year of its existence. Formed in 1999 by Ditto in small-town Arkansas, where she grew up the daughter of a poor single mother, Gossip also includes guitarist Brace Paine and drummer Hannah Blilie (also a lesbian). The band relocated to Olympia, Washington, in 2001 and signed with Kill Rock Stars, the independent label noted for its association with Pacific Northwest riot grrrl bands like Bikini Kill. Gossip now resides in Portland.

But it wasn’t until Ditto’s tirade against President Bush’s anti-gay-marriage campaign, “Standing in the Way of Control” on last year’s album of the same name, that Gossip found itself in the public eye. The buzz reached fever pitch in the UK this year when the song was featured in advertising for the television program “Skins.”

Ditto finds herself a somewhat reluctant spokesperson for the queer and fat positive movements. “I never come in with a blazing torch and say, ‘OK, we’re going to change everything,’” she says. “I don’t want to do that. But of course as a fat queer, I do want to change things.”

Japan, she realizes, may present a special challenge. “I’ve heard it’s socially conservative, but growing up in Arkansas, I can deal with conservatives. I’ve heard fat people are really frowned upon, but to me it’s like, ‘What’s new?’ I think it’s exciting to go there.”

And in fact Ditto is arriving at a time when the waif-like figure favored in Japanese women may be shifting. A recent article in a leading Japanese women’s magazine featured the singer in a spread dedicated to celebrating diverse female body types, and according to a recent article in the International Herald Tribune, it’s now Japanese men who are supposed to be slender.

This may reflect changing attitudes as the world at large reacts to the epidemic of anorexic models. Ditto and Gossip were chosen alongside Alicia Keys and Iggy Pop to appear in October’s Fashion Rocks show in London. “I love fashion,” gushes Ditto. “It was really fun. I think it’s important for girls to see that there’s more than one way of looking and being. If you believe in yourself, then other people will believe in you too.”

She makes the obvious point that it wasn’t until recently that the public demanded its entertainers be thin. “If you look [at] music from the ages, if you look at Aretha Franklin, she wasn’t skinny. This is a very modern thing where we have a problem with people being fat. It’s really morbid and stupid that it can take away from your talent.”

The media, she says, bears the brunt of the blame. “How can you trust a media that supports the war [in Iraq] and at the same time trust them with your body image? Why would you choose to believe the media, when you know who you are? I have really healthy friendships and feel good about myself. There are people who you really want to love you, and those are the people who matter. The people who say negative things—fuck ’em.” Entering the lion’s den, Ditto recently took a position as a fortnightly agony aunt for British paper the Guardian, where she offers advice on such questions as how to come out of the closet.

For those who haven’t heard Standing in the Way of Control, it should be said that with Gossip, you’re not just getting a bunch of polemics. The aforementioned Franklin and tragic ’60s belter Janis Joplin make good reference points when it comes to Ditto’s lungpower. And in Paine and Blilie, you’ve got a rhythm section that filters the buzz of the riot grrrl movement into a contemporary electro-punk vocabulary.

Recently re-signed to Sony’s new LGBT-specialist imprint Music With a Twist, Gossip have the wind at their backs. “It feels different because you’re dealing with people who have the same reference point, so you don’t have to explain things and worry about people feeling uncomfortable around you,” Ditto says. “It’s also an important social image movement in the United States right now, as far as trying to eradicate the separate-but-not-equal factor out of the system when it comes to gay marriage and sex. It’s a really important time to represent the people that you belong to.”

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