![]() MISS PIGGY: That’s very similar to what happened to me-I ended up with a “small group of weirdos” called the Muppets. We were basically the duck-billed platypuses of punk. We only saw pictures and read zines, so we could only interpret the aesthetic and message of punk scenes around the world. We were a small group of weirdos and baby punks and gays and free spirits who had to use our imaginations a lot. This was the mid-’90s, and a Christian university controlled the county where I grew up and made it nearly impossible to get MTV, and certain magazines weren’t carried, or if it was, say, a gay magazine, like Out or The Advocate, you would have to ask for them behind the counter. You learn how to pull yourself out of the mud, sometimes literally.ĭITTO: As a teenager, Arkansas didn’t have a lot of options for fun, so we made our own fun. ![]() MISS PIGGY: You can discover an inner strength when faced with that kind of childhood. I was independent and strong-willed because I had to learn life wasn’t fair at a young age. I learned to sew, crochet, and embroider. I can easily entertain myself, and I’m good with my hands. I learned to be resourceful in a way only poverty can teach. I learned early on to be loud so that I didn’t blend in with the background noise. Coming from Arkansas, having six brothers and sisters, my mother working so hard-there wasn’t always enough money, attention, or time to go around. Moi once lived a totally unaccessorized life.ĭITTO: I would imagine you and I had similar experiences. How do you think your upbringing shaped your life and your art?ĭITTO: It is so difficult to imagine you, Miss Piggy, anywhere but the most metropolitan of cities. Let’s get started, shall we? I want to begin with our common background-you grew up in Arkansas, and I, too, hail from rural origins. I have a way of turning any interview or conversation into a discussion about moi. ![]() MISS PIGGY: Well, don’t vous worry, Beth. MISS PIGGY: I “can’t” do dishes, but you probably already guessed that.ĭITTO: It will be very difficult to make this interview about moi, as I have so many questions and want to hear all about your incredible life and career. You speak French, you know karate, you make assertiveness chic, you’ve been the editor of Vogue Paris. “Miss Piggy” was one of the many things I was lovingly called by my family growing up. I wouldn’t be the person I am today without such a positive role model. As a little girl, I karate-chopped many siblings while wearing a winter glove and with a hair bauble around my ring finger pretending to be you. We simply must work together.īETH DITTO: Oh, Miss Piggy! I cannot tell you what a dream it is for me to be speaking to you. MISS PIGGY: Beth, I adore you! You’re fabulous in every possible way. Here, in what Ditto describes as the fulfillment of a “lifelong childhood dream,” she speaks to another dazzling diva who loves to hog the spotlight: the singular, sensational Miss Piggy. Out tomorrow via Virgin Records, the new songs, which address themes such as married life and compromise, expose Ditto’s softer side albeit with echoes of her trademark grit. In the five years since the release of the band’s last album, A Joyful Noise, Ditto, 36, has settled down with her wife and two cats in Portland, Oregon, and-in addition to writing Coal to Diamonds: A Memoir and launching an eponymous plus-size fashion line-has been at work on her debut solo LP, Fake Sugar. Seventeen years later, and with five albums under their belt, the members of Gossip have now gone their separate ways. At age 18, in 1999, she set out for the Northwest, cut her teeth in the riot grrrl scene of Olympia, Washington, and within a few months was one-third of a group that projected a message of acceptance, body positivity, and, yes, soulful, sweaty dancing. ![]() Before she became known as the growling feminist frontwoman of the punk-inflected rock band Gossip, Beth Ditto was a misfit in rural Arkansas, with a crew of queer outsider friends, a fertile imagination, and dreams of being a star.
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