by Courtney McKinnon
photo by Austin Young

Chastised for baring her midriff during a screen test for All-American Girl, Margaret Cho has returned to television with a vengeance, flaunting her almost-40, bacon-eating, alcohol-drinking, plastic-surgery-free, heavily tattooed bod on VH1’s The Cho Show — so you can see her au naturale ass (aside from the anal bleaching) and kiss it.

You just returned home from performing at the DNC. How was it?

I was nervous because you don’t wanna say anything that can be taken out of context by the right wing and used against the Obama campaign. I’m very critical of the right wing, especially the Christian right, because I am a Christian. When they talk about homosexuality, I find it appalling. They can’t speak for God, they can’t speak for the Bible, and they’re lying—the Bible never says anything against homosexuality. I don’t want to be a burden on the party, but the gay community can’t get lost.

With gay marriage now legal in California, if you weren’t happily married, what woman would you want to marry?

Kim Kardashian! [Laughs] She is so gorgeous. I want to just count her eyelashes because they’re so pretty.

When Team Cho competed on Family Feud, was there a strategy involved?

I was just assuming that my parents were gonna blow it, because they didn’t know what Family Feud was. They were worried cuz they thought they were actually gonna fight. The whole thing was really great. They did well. I cheated.

You cheated?

Yeah, we totally cheated, but we were allowed to because most of our team was “English as a Second Language.”

How far are you going to take your ink, considering future on-screen deals?

The movie and TV stuff I get is all like a frickin’ law firm. I’m gonna kick Alfre Woodard’s ass and be the judge in every single movie cuz that’s where I’m headed. I’m always in the roles like on Sesame Street or something, so I gotta keep it a little vanilla. All my tattoos have to be Samurai style—above the elbow, above the knee and nothing on the V-neck. If I could, I would get my face done. I think it would be really cool to be 80 and start getting them on my face.

What was more uncomfortable for you, getting the G-Shot [collagen injection into the clitoris to make sex better] or pooing your pants while stuck in traffic on the 101?

Um, getting the G-Shot was the worst. Crapping your pants is … there’s something kind of childhood memory about it that’s not so unpleasant. [Laughs] It’s like, I’ve done it before—I been there. The G-Shot hurt for four months and I couldn’t have sex for a long time. I guess it was like an STD, although I’ve never had one.

What’s going on with Lifetime’s Drop Dead Diva pilot?

It’s a comedy drama, and I’m playing a legal secretary. It’s about a woman who’s really thin and blonde who dies and gets reincarnated in the body of a woman who’s very overweight but brilliant. I read this script and I just cried. For women, so much of our value is placed on our bodies, and our self-esteem is based on how we fit in the social matrix of what is considered beautiful. I was always super fat and everybody said I was ugly when I was a kid—even people who loved me. I grew up feeling super invisible, and one day I woke up and I was gorgeous. [Laughs] That’s why I don’t care about what I look like anymore, because I’ve been at both extremes of the spectrum and now I don’t care where I land. The show is about these issues—about the body, body image, beauty and women, and it’s a beautiful, beautiful show.

Is it true that some jerk on a radio show asked you what it would feel like if you woke up beautiful one day?

Yeah. He’s like, “What if you were blonde, had blue eyes, you were 5-foot-11 and you weighed 100 pounds, what would you do?” It’s like, if that’s the only kind of beautiful you see, that’s sad for you. That inspired me to do a show about beauty and how it affects us. It’s kind of how my year is—doing the Beautiful tour, The Cho Show and Drop Dead Diva—it’s really all about the same kind of thing; it’s about beauty and how much value it has.