Thursday, March 31, 2011 11:05pm ET by  
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Beth Ditto: “Miss Piggy was my idol”

Gossip frontwoman Beth Ditto has revealed some of her feminist idols, and there’s a muppet amongst them.

"I have a lot of feminist idols,” she tells Spinner.com. “It started with Gloria Steinem at a really young age, like 11 or something. Mama Cass, who was really fat and she didn't lose weight. I worshipped Ethel Merman and I worshipped Ethel Merman a lot. Whoopi Goldberg was also a really big one for me – she was one of the first people I heard talk about back-alley abortions.”

Ditto, who released a solo EP earlier this year, goes on to admit that a certain feisty muppet changed her life.

This sounds really hilarious but I swear to god, she changed my life: Miss Piggy. She was an incredible feminist icon, especially for a kid in the 80s. But especially as a fat kid, people used to call me Miss Piggy all the time but it never dawned on me that it was an insult until people pointed it out. I thought it was really cool, like 'Yeah, Miss Piggy rules!'"

 

Watch Beth Ditto perform a snippet of ‘I Will Always Love You’ acapella at a party here: