She's so unusual

31 flavors of OH MY GOD YES:

NYT: You were raised by your mother and grandmother in a Sicilian-Catholic home in Ozone Park, Queens.

Cyndi Lauper: My mother wanted to be a singer. She ended up working as a waitress in diners, and that was so heartbreaking for her. I wanted to save her. I wanted to save everybody.

NYT: Are you suggesting that there is an autobiographical impetus to your best-known song, "Girls Just Want to Have Fun"?

CL: Yeah, my mother and grandmother never had any fun. They just scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed. And what do you think happened? I saw three generations of women coming to my concerts — grandmothers, mothers and their daughters. And that felt like an achievement.

NYT: I think of "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" as the first feminist-backlash song. It came out in the 80's and goes against the preachy and high-minded tone of 70's feminism.

CL: That's not true! It's totally feminist. It's a song about entitlement. Why can't women have fun?