GOD STOOD INTHEWAY OF GOSSIP; Beth Ditto reveals how her religious upbringing nearly forced her into marriage and kids.

Byline: JOHN DINGWALL

As a teenager, Beth Ditto was all set to get pregnant and settle down as an Arkansas housewife - because she feared coming out of the closet would incur God's wrath.

The Gossip singer was brought up in America's Bible Belt and prepared to give up on her punk ideals after graduating from college.

A suburban family beckoned for Beth, herself one of seven siblings, until friends rallied round and paid for the plane ticket to Washington that would change her life.

Now 28, she recalled: "Living in Arkansas, when I was 18 or 19, I was like, 'Oh, I'm going to get pregnant and work here'.

"I didn't know what else there was other than being a suburban housewife.

"I didn't still think of myself necessarily as heterosexual but I was afraid of God. I didn't want to make a decision to come out as a lesbian.

"I was afraid to make the decision because it was a scary transition. I'd have to go away and take care of myself. I was scared of that and what it meant to give up on God.

"It's scary to give up on God when all you have known is the Bible Belt. That is the ultimate fear. I used to wish a plane ticket would land in my lap or I would just get pregnant so the decision would be made for me."

Things changed when Beth's punk pal Kathy Mendonca called her from Washington and invited her to stay. They formed the band Gossip and Beth grabbed the chance to express herself fully.

She said: "I had these best friends including our former drummer Kathy who had moved away to Olympia, Washington.

"All these weirdos, all these queers and really cool people I knew that I was closest to had left. All my friends had migrated there. I was destroyed.

"I had graduated in May of '99, and in June of that year Kathy called me and said she had just got paid and had got a credit card and that if I wanted she could buy me a ticket right there. So she got off the phone and bought a ticket for me and that's what happened."

It took Gossip four albums to make it huge with StandingInTheWayOf Control in 2007, and Beth had no idea how phenomenally successful her band would be.

She admitted: "It was the weirdest thing that ever happened to me.

"Still to this day I don't know how it happened. We were doing tours the way we were always doing tours and all of a sudden things were different. When you get that level of success, the things we cannot control are what people say, what people think of your record. You can't control all of these different things.

"That is where you have to give up on control. We as a band know we will always maintain our creative control. All the album artwork is done, we write our own parts. The power of that is in our hands."

The follow-up album Music For Men was recorded in Shangri La Studios in Malibu, California, with top producer Rick Rubin - who helped Beth believe in herself as a lyricist.

She said: "It was an amazing experience working with Rick Rubin. People told us he would be a difficult person to work with but he is the most gentle and spiritual man and really good at nurturing. He helped me relate to my writing. He invited me to his house with my notebook to sit down and talk about the lyrics and run through the songs.

"I thought, 'Oh no. I'm going to have to rewrite all this stuff because 95 per cent of it isn't finished'. He was like, '95 per cent of this is done. You've written it already'.

"It was validation I needed. I learned so much about myself through working with Rick. For one, I learned that I am not as bad a lyricist as I thought.

"He is someone who could give me an honest opinion that was constructive. He saw the potential and took us seriously where we never took ourselves seriously before. He treated us like adults and helped me to think that this wasn't a weird and funny thing that is going to pass soon, and that I could take myself seriously as a musician.

"We came from a scene where to take your music seriously wasn't considered very cool. Being able to take ourselves seriously and still maintain the punk ethic and identity is amazing."

Their latest single Love Long Distance is released on September 13.

But Beth is not restricting herself to her music career. The size-28 star - who stands 5ft 1in and weights 16 stone - recently launched her Beth Ditto at Evans fashion line, rubbing shoulders with the likes of style icon Karl Lagerfeld and supermodel Kate Moss at catwalk events.

She is hopeful that her move into the fashion world can inspire larger women to feel confident about their body image, while shrugging off recent criticism from one blogger who argued she is a token overweight woman used by the fashion world as a decoy to distract us from its obsession with all things thin.

Beth said: "I do think I can have a positive influence as there are people who had a positive influence on me.

"People like Alison Moyet, Mama Cass and people like that, right through to Divine. There are always going to be people criticising me. I suppose it is easy to sit back and think you can change the world from behind a desk by blogging. That person never had a conversation with me about it and maybe it is token.

"Being face-to-face with people like Karl Lagerfeld was one of the most challenging things I have ever done. If there are two people that feel excited that it could be them in five or 10 or 15 years, that matters to me. You can't be an activist and a person who entertains if youjustfollowsociety.You have to be true to yourself.You have to make your own way otherwise it is not your agenda and you are preaching to the choir.

"I never knew what resistance was really like until I entered the mainstream. When you are in a punk scene and everybody around you thinks like you, talks like you and walks like you and you have the same ideology, that sort of resistance doesn't exist.

"It is much more dangerous to be a feminist and stand in front of Karl Lagerfeld and look him in the eye. That felt like resistance far more than being at a punk show full of people who already know about politics and feminism."

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HOT GOSSIP... The singer is glad she made the move from Arkansas to superstardom where she mixes with the likes of, from far left, Karl Lagerfeld and producer Rick Rubin