BY NATASIA LANGFELDER
Lesbian.com
Margaret Cho is arguably best known for her stand-up but she has been on the National stage since her 1994 sitcom, “All-American Girl.” Cho garnered attention for being one of the few Asian-Americans to be the central character in a TV show. Later, she revealed in her stand-up that she had been struggling with an eating disorder and became outspoken on both the topics of sizeism (way before it was cool) and the intricacies of racism in Hollywood.
As if that wasn’t enough, she started talking about gayness. She dipped her toes into the gay pool slowly, first mentioning that she was a huge “fag hag” (author’s note: love the Cho, hate that phrase) and pursuing that theme by creating an entire movie based on her and her gay bestie. As an MC groupie, I remember the precise moment she moved from being the kind of ally who puts the A in LGBTQIA to a solid Q. Cho came out on-stage by working a bit into her act where she explains to her traditional Korean mother that a gay lady on the cruise ship she was performing on went down on her. Although she is married to a man, she had this to say about her sexuality in an interview:
Margaret Cho is smart, queer, hilarious and hey, she looks great posing on a motorcycle. (Via Cho’s Facebook)
“…To say [I’m] bisexual is saying that there’s only two kinds of gender. I really like transgenders…But, when I say that, then people think it’s a joke. It’s not! It’s actually my life! Transgender people are people who feel that they were born in the wrong body, and so their life is about transforming into the body that they feel comfortable and good in. So, those are people who get gender re- assignment surgery. That’s part of it. That’s not always transgender, but that experience is always different and everybody’s different, but I would say bisexuality would be a limiting term.”
The T part of our rainbow gets so little love from celebrities. But Margaret Cho is an inspirational lady if you’ve ever struggled with gender, sexuality, weight, disordered eating or racism: she’s not afraid to talk about any of it.
Keep up with Margaret Cho at MargaretCho.com
Natasia Langfelder is just a girl writing about girls in New York City. Read more of her work at Hot Femme In The City
