Quotes from Beth Ditto

Aretha Franklin was a teenage mom, a musician who came from an incredibly Christian background, but there was a lot of love, which is really inspiring in a feminist way.

When I was a kid, Ellen DeGeneres and Rosie O'Donnell were mere blips on the gaydar; and they were both still in the closet.

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.

It's really hard for me to sometimes put myself out there, like 'Hey, how do you feel about making music together?' because maybe I'm afraid of rejection or I don't want to put anybody out. It's the Southerner in me, like, 'I don't mean to bother you but do you mind making a song?'

You know, either I'm too fat or I'm flavour of the month. I don't feel either, but maybe I'm both, who knows?

I just like food too much, and I don't want to change. I spent so much of childhood trying to change, and I just got sick of it... I don't want to look like Britney Spears, I just don't want to. She's hideous.

This archaic idea - that a woman who is unmarried and childless at 30 is somehow unnatural - will probably always exist, and, like most social standards, it is ridiculous.

I was born fat and have always been, which was just fine and even healthy and cute until I turned ten or so. Puberty hit like a hurricane and brought a new set of rules. All of a sudden it was my fault I was chubby.

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 feel sorry... for people who've had skinny privilege and then have it taken away from them. I have had a lifetime to adjust to seeing how people treat women who aren't their idea of beautiful and therefore aren't their idea of useful, and I had to find ways to become useful to myself.

Thanks to capitalism, the importance placed on beauty has never been so manipulated. We are the guinea pigs force-fed ads that tell us how pathetic we are: that we will never be loved, happy or valuable unless we have the body, the face, the hair, even the personality that will apparently be ours, if only we buy their products.

I work really well under pressure but I really hate doing things on a timeframe.

I love Vivienne Westwood. Her work is so interesting, you can always find something that's great and fits you.

Because I didn't have any queer, lesbian, female role models I hated my own femininity and had to look deep within myself to create an identity that worked for me. Pop culture just doesn't hand us enough variety to choose from.

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.'

Portland is a place where you can find a community as a feminist, a vegan or a fat activist. Artists, musicians, knitters, and filmmakers can all meet like-minded souls. It's proved the perfect place for me and all my punk friends.

Olympia was a town crawling with music. I was new to the whole punk scene. The culture shock continued; Olympia had bagels! We didn't have bagels in Arkansas. You could order vegetarian food all over town! It was so crazy to me - a place with so many vegetarians, the restaurants made special dishes for them?

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.

As a kid, I was always mad - just noticing the women at Thanksgiving, running around the kitchen, while the men were watching football. For one, I don't want to cook, and for two, I hate football. I was stuck in the middle.

I'm passionate about color. My best friend and I sit and look at Pantone books for fun.

All this fashion stuff - who's cool now - is just a bigger version of the cool kids versus the nerds.

I don't have a good attention span and can't spend long in record stores or video shops or games emporiums without getting grumpy.

I'm not sure that I am able to feel embarrassment.

It's funny how something so normal and mundane that you see every day-your body-can be controversial. The shock value is intense. It's like carrying an art piece around with you all the time.