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Margaret Cho And The Fabulous Food Show Lead This Week's Event Picks

Margaret Cho, who brings her Beautiful tour to Lakewood Civic Auditorium tonight, promises to show local fans some love for sending Barack Obama to the White House. After all, it's the first time she ever actively pushed for a presidential candidate. "When he got Ohio, we knew he was going to win, because the state is always the big indicator of who our next president will be," says Cho. "I'm so proud of Ohio and all the work I got to do on his campaign."

With the election over, the 39-year-old comedian is back on the road with a show that focuses on society's obsession with beauty. The material is payback at TV executives who told her she was "too fat and too Asian" for her short-lived 1995 sitcom, All-American Girl. "A lot of my work is about feminist issues, about a society that places demands on women to look a certain way," says Cho. "I ventured into comedy so that I wouldn't have to be judged on those standards. Television was a really rude awakening that I would have to lose all this weight just to play myself."

But Cho hasn't completely written off the small screen. These days, she stars in the Lifetime comedy Drop Dead Diva about a thin woman who dies and comes back to life as a fat one. She can be also seen in VH1's The Cho Show, where a camera crew follows her around in "pseudo-reality" situations with her parents, friends and assistants. Both shows explore the many sides of beauty. "It's [about] how youth-oriented looks are considered legitimate, especially for woman," says Cho. "It's oppressive. And if you only have one vision of what beautiful is, it's sad. You're missing out on other opportunities to appreciate it."