100 Women We Love 2006

Meet the class of 2006

Beth Ditto

Fat, fabulous and fantastic are all descriptors that the Gossip’s lead singer Ditto embraces. This Olympia, Washington indie rocker is proud to be a lesbian and a spokesperson for large and lovely women. She attributes her big, soulful singing style to being raised Southern Baptist and Pentecostal, and admits that as a child, she was heavily into singers like Mama Cass and Gladys Knight. She has unabashedly called skinny chicks like Britney Spears “hideous,” and says of fat women, “You know what’s funny is they treat it like a minority, but it’s actually the majority and I always wonder why we haven’t gotten it together….[When] I went out [in] Olympia, I met people who were part of a bigger movement—no pun intended—but a bigger movement, and it was really one of the most powerful things in my life.”


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