Big audio dynamite

PROFILE - BETH DITTO:With the voice of a pop-punk angel, an explosive personality and a figure Rubens could only have dreamt of, Beth Ditto is a modern-day pop-culture icon like no other

IT'S LIKE A punk version of My Fair Lady. A poor, overweight gal from Arkansas is plucked from the moshpit and finds herself feted by the fashion world, hanging out at all the big parties with the likes of Kate Moss and Karl Lagerfeld, and regularly gracing the covers of the glossy magazines, some fabulous creation adorning her size 28 figure, or – more likely – completely naked, with nothing but a skimpy pink tutu to cover up her prodigious curves.

But Beth Ditto’s rise from shouty riot grrrl to pop-culture icon has been largely unplanned; you will search in vain for a svengali or mastermind lurking behind those love handles. Ditto has effortlessly conquered hearts and minds with a combination of chutzpah, street-smarts and a flamboyantly out-there personality – no better woman for grabbing all the attention, completely taking over the spotlight, and leaving her skinnier sistas in the shade.

Rock fans know her as the wild, big-voiced singer in US electro-punk trio Gossip; fashionistas know her as the plus-sized punk goddess who was the toast of Paris Fashion Week last march, dominating the front row of the catwalk shows in the company of Kate Moss, and performing an incendiary show with her band at the Fendi party, during which she stripped out of her Karl Lagerfeld creation and performed in her bra and panties.

The music-buying public cottoned onto this five-foot ball of disco-punk dynamite from the Deep South with her band's breakthrough 2006 single, Standing in the Way of Control. Few cared that this barnstorming indie-electro-disco stomper was a beat-driven attack on the Bush administration's opposition to gay marriage. What mattered was that this trio from Arkansas rocked, and their lead singer was a compelling combination of Brenda Lee, Dolly Parton and Siouxsie Sioux.

Indie rock bible the NMEdeclared Ditto the coolest woman in rock, and who could argue with their choice? Here was an unselfconscious, openly gay pop star whose music blended rock power with punk attitude and robotic rhythms, and melded down-home, plain-speaking wisdom with the outrageous opinions of an urban iconoclast. And, even with her un-svelte shape, she wasn't afraid to shed her size-28 clothes on stage, at parties or for the cover of the NMEand – most recently – the debut issue of fashion glossy Love.

Ditto is the Cinderella who has become the southern belle of the ball, and everybody wants to be best pals with the princess charming from Arkansas; not only is she adored as an indie icon, she's also hailed as a beacon for bigger women and revered as the uncrowned queen of queer. For a shortie from the sticks, she's sure got a lot of people out there looking up to her. "I represent a scene," she told journalist Miranda Sawyer. "The homos and the weirdos know that our band is always going to be their friend." Even hard-nosed journalists melt when she sashays into the room – Giles Hattersley of the London Timeswas reduced to a burbling lump of jelly after Ditto pressed his head between her bosoms pre-interview, crushing all objectivity.

But not everyone has surrendered to Ditto’s ample charms. Just last week, a study conducted by UK healthcare provider Nuffield Health concluded that Ditto and other larger stars such as James Corden and Eamonn Holmes were bad role models for young people, because they made being overweight appear normal. “The danger of celebrities who flaunt their weight is that viewers admire them and do not take their own weight as seriously as they should,” said Prof Michael McMahon sternly.

Leaving aside the insult of lumping Ditto in with a mediocre comedian and an anodyne TV presenter, the study’s findings seemed to imply that, by becoming successful, fat people were setting a bad example. Nuffield is a private hospital offering customers gastric banding, so you could argue it’s not disinterested in categorising people as obese.

While admitting that she has no interest in slimming down, Ditto is bemused by the varying reactions she gets whenever she flaunts her flesh, either onstage or in photoshoots. “It’s funny how something so normal and mundane that you see every day – your body – can be so controversial. The shock value is intense. It’s like carrying a piece of art around with you all the time.” Prof McMahon’s criticism didn’t stop Ditto from launching her collection of plus-size clothes for UK chain Evans earlier this week.

She was rumoured to have previously turned down an offer to design a collection for Top Shop, because of their limited sizing policy. In designing the collection for Evans, Ditto looked towards her own idols – Blondie, The Slits, Grace Jones and Mama Cass – for inspiration, translating her own retro and thrift-store chic into colourful outfits that Ditto hopes will make the wearer feel more like a blossom than a wallflower. She also looked back to her 1980s childhood for ideas – which probably explains why leggings are included in the collection.

“I wanted to do a lot of things you’re always told not to wear if you’re big, like anything with a good cut,” she told the Times. “You have to get creative if you’re fat.” Elsewhere she has said: “I learnt early that you have two choices – you can decide to loathe yourself or you can decide to work with it and do something positive.”

SHE WAS BORN Mary Beth Patterson 28 years ago in Searcy, Arkansas, the middle child of seven kids living with their single mother in a two-bedroomed house. The town is located deep in the Bible Belt, and Mary Beth – who knew from the age of five that she was gay – was brought up to believe that lesbians and other “transgressors” were destined to burn in hell. “I still worry about it a little. I don’t believe in heaven, but I do still fear hell.”

To illustrate what a hick town she hailed from, she told a story about how a friend shot and ate a squirrel – it quickly blew up into a story about her family being so poor that their regular Sunday roast was a bushy-tailed, nut-eating rodent.

Her home town was said to have been the inspiration for the movie Footloose. Whether that's true or not, it was plain to the chubby teenage lesbian that she would soon have to cut loose. She met guitarist Nathan Howdeshell aka Brace Paine, when she was 17, and the pair hit it off musically, forming The Gossip (the "The" was later dropped) with drummer Kathy Mendonca (she was later replaced by Hannah Billie). The trio moved to the more liberal environs of Olympia in Washington State, and began building up their following among the gay and lesbian community.

For Ditto, moving to Olympia was one big coming-out party – for the first time, she was able to dress the way she felt, without fear of hellfire.

She now lives in Portland, Oregon, and has a long-term partner, a transgendered person named Freddie; for the past few weeks, though, she's been on this side of the Atlantic, overseeing the preparations for the launch of her clothing range, and promoting Gossip's latest album, Music For Men, their first on a major label. The title, says guitarist Paine, is a feminist joke – music for weirdos, queers, freaks and fatties it undoubtedly is, but straight men can enjoy it too. Produced by Rick Rubin, the man who has defined the sound of rock in the US, it's less frantic than their previous studio album, Standing in the Way of Control, with Ditto settling more comfortably into her big, Janis Joplin voice, and the sparse instrumentation allowing lots of room for the music to breathe.

THE BAND ARE PROMOTING the album with a series of gigs and festival appearances, including Lattitude, Leeds and Reading. This time round, however, Ditto faces a new challenge – convincing the band’s hardcore fan base that she hasn’t sold out and gone mainstream. “If you think fashion is snobby, go hang out with some punks. They are beyond elitist.”

Ditto has no truck with such terms as "overweight" or "obese", because "it sets a standard for people to be". She prefers to reclaim the term "fat", and she refuses to be seen as part of a supersized minority. "It's treated like no one in the world is like this, and it's the most shameful thing, but really most of us are fat asses, you know." She also has no time for "fauxmosexuals" or lipstick lesbians, and has called Katy Perry's hit song I Kissed A Girla "boner dyke anthem for straight girls who like to turn guys on by making out or, like, faking gay".

Mostly, though, she has no time for people who tell her she has no right to go to the ball. “I really believe that if you don’t tell yourself, no one is going to tell you, so you might as well start telling yourself that you are amazing.”

There was a time, however, when the struggle to keep up her self-esteem became too difficult, and she was treated for depression in a psychiatric hospital. Through it all, though, Ditto remained grounded enough to realise that. though she may be flavour of the season in fashion terms, next year she could find herself on the wrong side of the velvet rope.

“This craziness, this attention, is not normal, and I never expected it, so I don’t expect it to last. You just gotta know that if it doesn’t last, It’s not going to kill you.”

CV BETH DITTO

Who is she?

American punk-disco diva and darling of the “fat-shionistas”

Why is she in the news?

The girl who makes her own stage clothes has just launched a collection for larger sizes at UK chain Evans.

Most appealing characteristic:

In a skinny-worshipping world she proves you can be fat AND cool.

Least appealing characteristic:

She will steal your thunder.

Most likely to say:

Little black skirt? I can turn it into a great garter belt.

Least likely to say:

Does my bum look big in this?