Margaret Cho
Korean-American actress and comedian.
I am admittedly insecure about my racial identity, an attitude that has much improved since my younger days when I absolutely abhorred it. Any attention paid to me being different was incredibly shameful...but the mirrors became too much...what a disappointing reality check!
Prejudice and bigotry rot me from within, and the strains of these viruses are hearty and hard to kill.
The dismissal of our anger as a racial minority is worse than any slur or epithet because it undermines our ability to react to it.
I think it's very important to feel beautiful. I think it's very political to feel beautiful, especially if you're Queer, because if you're Queer you have to take on the world every single day of your life, so you have to feel beautiful to survive.
I see evidence of my own racist brainwashing when exploring the landscape of current foreign policy. (about North Korea)
[on reacting to racism] I don't wanna be the better person. I don't wanna rise above it. I do wanna sink down to their level. I am not gonna turn the other cheek. "I'mma gonna show you what cheek I'mma turn, OK!"
The Pope talks so much shit. The Pope was castigating the media for making gays look normal. YEAH, you're a real GOOD judge of normal, with your gold dress and your matching gold hat, living it up in the Vatican with 500 men surrounded by the finest antiques in the world! Queen, please! You live like Versace did!
If you've ever bought drugs before, you understand that for some bizarre reason you have to feign this relationship with your dealer. It's like you're not really going to him to buy drugs. You're going for a social visit. Drugs are the surprise that just happens when you get there. "Oh, hash? I didn't know!" And he's talkin' to you and you're tryin' to be interested, you know, "Oh yeah? No, really...I love Foghat. No, seriously." And inside you're like, "Just fuckin' give it! I hate you. Your house smells like cat pee!" Why do all drug dealers' houses smell like cat pee?
So from the age of 10, I became anorexic, and then bulimic, and then stayed that way for about 20 years, until one day I just said, "Hey, what if this is it? What if this is just what I look like and nothing I do changes that? So how much time would I save if I stopped taking that extra second every time I look in the mirror to call myself a big fat fuck? How much time would I save if I just let myself walk by a plate-glass window without sucking in my gut and throwing back my shoulders? How much time would I save?" And it turns out I save about 97 minutes a week. I can take a pottery class.
These new ways of looking at ourselves politically redefine what it means to be American. It took our until now, very passive identity and turned us all into revolutionaries.
We are a nation divided which is obvious. The problem is, the division is keeping this monarchy in place.
It is a good life, if I watch myself. Kind of like when I used to diet, but now instead of limiting calories, I will not allow negative self-talk. I cut out insults like I cut out carbs and it is hard as hell because I crave self-abuse like hot, fresh sourdough bread, but you know you have to be nice to you if you are going to live together.
There was never a lack of reasons to hate myself, to hate my body.
Do I look like a happy-ending to you?
I was on the floor in the emergency room, and the woman came up to me and said "Hi, my name is Gwen and I'm here to wash your vagina!"
I stood in front of a hundred and one critics at a critic's convention and a critic asked me, "Miss Cho, isn't it true that your management asked you to lose weight to play the part of yourself in your own TV show?" Gail [the producer] grabbed the mike from me and said, "There is no truth in that whatsoever." I...was so...hungry.
The terrible thing about invisibility is the lengths we will go to be seen.
Why am I political? Because society's consistent and constant disregard and lack of respect for minorities, even the title minority, is too much to bear silently. Their insistence at our invisibility, whether subtle as noninclusion, or as loud and violent as hate crimes, is contagious, and can make me hide from myself.
When we never see who we are, never hear what we think about things, what we are doing as a group or what we are doing individually, then it is as if we are never there in the first place. Silence = Nonexistence.
The amount of racism, sexism, homophobia, and hatred in general that lies beneath the surface of the American dream is astounding and serious.