Beth Ditto and Me

Let me preface this post by saying that I love Beth Ditto, I really do. The Gossip is an ammmmmmazing band and I have been a fan since their early days (oh my). But the first time I saw a picture of Beth Ditto performing I was in SHOCK. SHOCK I tell you. A half naked fat girl on stage OH MY! But then I thought about it and thought about it and thought about it and decided, why not? 

This gets NSFW


I spent a majority of my time in the 90s writing for zines and coding crappy geocities web sites about riot grrrl and third wave feminism and some of the most powerful imagery of that time for me were women not being afraid of their own bodies and using them as literal billboards for our message. Anyone else familiar with the movement remember this picture? ->


So where did this body and woman positive attitude go when I saw Beth Ditto for the first time? Dunno, but I'm glad that she shocked me back into the mentality that our bodies aren't things to be ashamed of. Our bodies are bodies, just the skin that we're in and regardless of shape, size, or color it's all beautiful.


It was Beth Ditto that actually reminded me that fat is beautiful because people are beautiful.

I mention all of this because Beth is featured AGAIN on National Enquirer's Best and Worst Beach Bods issue... which for some inexplicable reason is being published in March. Inside the magazine Beth is admonished for wearing a "skin tight" bathing suit. Wait what..? Yeah.

But the National Enquirer's attempt at body shaming isn't really the point of this. Beth Ditto in a bathing suit is...

I was looking at the picture of her in her suit and thought to myself, my god she is so fucking adorable and again, she gave me pause and forced me to think about something. 
How is it that I can look at a picture of Beth in a bathing suit that hugs her rolls and think that she's beautiful but when I put on a bathing suit... well I don't know what happens when I put on a bathing suit because I haven't for so many years. How is it that I can see her and the of other fat girls that work it and think about how stunning they are but when I mimic the looks I feel like a dowdy fraud? Why do I allow other fat girls to be fat and beautiful but refuse to let myself do the same?

This time I don't really have an answer to that.