Margaret Cho talks to Huffington Post about being beautiful and about homophobia

The hilarious and mega-talented Margaret Cho co-stars on a new Lifetime series Drop Dead Diva which premiered Sunday.

She plays her supportive friend and assistant to a shallow model-in-training who dies in a sudden accident only to find her soul resurfacing in the body of a brilliant, plus-size and recently deceased attorney.

Cho talked to Marianne Schnall about that and other topics in an exclusive interview for Huffington Post. Here are a few excerpts:

MS: I was thinking about your own personal history in television and the struggles that you’ve had in terms of body issues, when on your first show “All-American Girl” the network executives asked you to lose weight to play yourself – and you wound up dieting yourself into the hospital – there’s this sort of beautiful irony to coming back into a show that’s actually dealing with these issues head on – it feels like maybe there’s a little progress there, or some hope, to have a show like this, and that you’re on it.

MC: I love it, yeah, and I love that I get to be on it. And to me it’s a wonderful thing because the images of women are so limited in television, you know. And then if you see somebody who is different than the girls that are like super-thin – then it’s like we’re treated like a visual joke. It’s like weight, just like race, becomes part of the issue. It’s like you can’t just have a person that has a different body size than the norm what is considered hot and not have to have that be the story – it’s like a weird thing. Why can’t all different types of women be considered beautiful? Why can’t we can’t we all be considered possible love interests? It’s very – I don’t know. I think things are getting better – just with the sign of a show like this is that things are getting better. I think maybe a show like this makes things get better.

MS: Speaking of which, my brother is gay and a fan of yours, and you have always been an outspoken advocate for gay and lesbian rights – how do you view the progress that has been made?

MC: Well, I think it’s tough right now – I’m really disturbed and feeling the disappointment of not being able to repeal Prop 8 in California, and the crushing realization that we have to wait another – I don’t know how many months or years until we can try again. So I’m disappointed in California, I’m disappointed in voters, and I’m disappointed in my home state, which is such a great state, is so filled with ignorance and hatred. But what is great is I got to marry couples last year – I was deputized as a marriage commissioner in San Francisco and was able to marry some friends of mine, and that was so beautiful. And so, you know, I did get to celebrate that, which is something I didn’t know I would see in my lifetime – having been around queer politics since the seventies, since I was a child. You know, I learned about politics from Harvey Milk, that’s my generation and sort of where I grew up, so it’s a triumph that we’re even fighting for this. But it’s still very disappointing.

MS: What do you think is behind homophobia? Having grown up myself with a brother who is gay, sometimes I think if you know somebody or are very close to somebody who is gay, it is really hard to understand what is behind homophobia. It so widely prevalent, yet it’s so upsetting and disturbing in so many ways.

MC: Yeah, it is. It’s weird – we shoot here in Georgia – I’m actually in Georgia now. We shoot in a little town called Peachtree City and I go to the gym every day and I have a fight with somebody at my gym – there’s this magazine called Focus on Family which is the James Dobson group – you know, they gave all the money to Prop. 8 and they’re very into – they’re the biggest, kind of really neo-con, religious-right organization. They have these magazines that they put out at the gym. And I’m so offended by it. So every day I bring my copies of Out, and The Advocate [laughs] and I put them all out and I cover up the Focus on Family. And then every time I come out of the gym, my magazines are gone but the Focus on Familys are there. So then I have to do it again, so every time I go, I bring like queer literature, I bring like Southern Voice, which is an Atlanta gay paper, I bring like whatever I have, you know, and I just lay them out, side-by-side to the Focus on Family, covering up the Focus on Family. And then by the time I’m out it’s Focus on Family. [laughs] But it’s like at least they don’t throw them away – they just put the Focus on Family on top. So at first I wanted to throw them away but then I realized no, that’s unfair – I’m just going to cover it up.

I don’t know, It’s weird down here because I think what it is, is that they just don’t know any gay people, and the people that are gay around them aren’t willing to come out of the closet – and it’s not that people are that mean down here – people are like the nicest people in the world – they’re just afraid of disappearing. You know, because if you look at popular culture, their culture is not catered to. Nobody gives a shit about ultra-conservative Christians, so they feel like they are disappearing, and they’re experiencing invisibility, which I think with queer society, with queer stuff, we have so much more of a voice now in the media. And the voice of the conservative is silent, it’s considered ignorant – which it is -and they want to hang on to their ignorance like it’s some kind of comfortable blanket. It’s not that they’re evil people, it’s just that they only love what they know, and they are afraid of losing it so they hold on harder. And so that’s why it’s such a weird battle. You know, I was really worried about coming and living down here and I was really concerned, but the people that I’ve met have been so lovely and wonderful and I know that they are homophobes. [laughs] I know that they don’t want gay marriage to exist. And I know all these things, yet they’re not bad people, they’re just fighting invisibility – the kind of invisibility that I have lived with my whole life. And so I am like finally becoming visible and relevant in society and they’re sensing their dwindling devolution and lessening grasp on society – they used to be the majority and now they are slowly dwindling away. And that is where ignorance comes from, that’s where all those people who want to kill the abortion doctors, that’s all the people who want to make sure that gays can’t adopt – their voices only exist because they’re louder because they are afraid of losing them.