What would this blog be without Margaret Cho? Margaret Cho is queen of the gays. I said it. If you are not familiar with her work, I suggest you acquaint yourself. Most of it is about being comfortable with yourself. I think I first saw her around 2003 during her Notorious C.H.O. tour. Her work deals with issues of sexuality, being the child of immigrant parents, and how her childhood experiences have influenced her into adulthood.
What makes Cho so interesting however is the kind of dark side to her career. In the 90's, she starred for a season in her own sitcom on one of the major networks, All American Girl. There were numerous problems with this show: producers thought that she was not thin or Asian enough. The result was bringing in coaches to teach her to be Asian and Cho starving herself. The show was later cancelled while Cho developed kidney failure and became addicted to drugs.
While this period was before I became familiar with her material, Cho later recovered and the experience has become an important part of her acts. I best know Cho for the above clip, in which Cho plays her mother and deals with issues of her sexuality and being the child of immigrants. Her later works have included burlesque performance and a new obsession with tattooing, as you can see in more recent pictures of her. For me she has always been a role model and a reminder that things get better when you stop trying to be who other people want you to be and start being yourself.
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