Raunchy Margaret Cho Spotlights Sex in New Show

Anne Burke, August 23
 

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Margaret Cho so charmed audiences with her raunchy confessional, “I’m the One That I Want,” that it hardly seems fair that she should sober up just as her fans acquire a taste for her tales of dope, booze and debauchery.  Not to worry. The Korean-American stand-up comedian reports that she has a new addiction: sex. Naughty, maybe. But is it bad? After all, this is a performer who proudly calls herself “The Notorious C.H.O.”  “Well, sex addiction can be a bad thing when it keeps you away from being in the moment, when you use it like a drug,” explains Cho, 32.  “I’m not doing that now,” she adds, almost apologetically. But: “I can. I have that in me.”  Cho is on the phone from Scotland, where she is performing in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival through Aug. 27. She is gracious and sweet-voiced, not what one would expect from somebody who prides herself in talking trash. But her goal isn’t about being a bad girl, she says.  “It’s about being progressive and challenging myself and my audiences. It’s really about taking this exploration of my life and putting it on the stage and working it out there,” she says.  NOT THIN, NOT BLONDE  Cho recently overcame addictions to drugs and alcohol. The San Francisco native, who started doing stand-up at age 16 in a coffee shop above her parents’ bookstore, spent a good deal of her life high or hung over. She hated herself for not being thin and blonde and good enough.  Cho spiraled out of control after the cancellation of her disastrous ABC sitcom, “All-American Girl,” the first network program starring Asian Americans. She was mostly playing Margaret Cho -- a smart-mouthed Korean-American living with her conservative immigrant family.  But the network executives told Cho she was “too heavy” to play herself, and ordered her to slim down. She lost 30 pounds (13.5 kg) in a month, winding up in the hospital with failed kidneys and a serious eating disorder.  After one season, the show was canceled. It was criticized as either too ethnic, or not ethnic enough. Cho knew that, ethnic questions aside, the show simply wasn’t funny -- but she still took the cancellation hard.  Cho worked out her feelings of betrayal and rejection in her 1999 one-woman show, “I’m the One That I Want.” It enjoyed a successful run off-Broadway. Cho took it on the road. A live concert filmed in San Francisco was a huge box-office hit.  A GAY BOYFRIEND AND A STRAIGHT BOYFRIEND  Today, Cho says she feels strong and healthy. She meditates and practices yoga. She says she still battles depression, and sees a therapist.  But at the moment, she sounds like someone who is enjoying life. A lot.  “I just had a brief summer fling. I had a gay boyfriend and a straight boyfriend. We went on bike rides at midnight in the graveyards and it was very romantic.”  Cho swears this is true. It happened in July in Provincetown, Mass., where she was trying out her new show, the aforementioned “Notorious C.H.O,” which opens Aug. 30 in Miami, launching a 35-city tour.  Actually, she didn’t have sex with the gay guy. But she says the relationship was “every bit as romantic” as the one with the straight guy.  “There’s a sort of ambiguity and androgyny that is part of me, that is very appealing to certain people,” she says.  Cho’s new show is about sex and eating. She said she still has issues with food, but her crazy obsession with her weight is over. She says she just doesn’t care anymore if she doesn’t fit somebody else’s ideal of a perfect body. She’s soft and curvy, and is fond of clingy clothes that show off her fleshy contours.  “I find it very effortless now, just feeling OK, living inside my body,” she says. “It’s weird how completely, incredibly overly conscious I was about my size.”  Cho is in the United Kingdom for the first time. Before the trip, she was thrilled to be going.  “I kind of fetish-ized the culture,” she said. Something to do with the ‘80s, Duran Duran, Culture Club and the sexy accents, she explains.  The romance appears to have worn off. She thinks America, despite its oppressive political correctness, might not be so bad.  “I find this a very sexist culture. So much more so than America,” she said. “Comedy is male-dominated and so unapologetically non-inclusive with regard to women. It doesn’t even make any attempts to find or nurture female comedians.”  She said that the audiences at the Fringe Festival are especially warm because an ethnic, woman comedian is a rarity in the U.K.  “It’s almost as if they’ve been waiting for so long,” she said.