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Deborah Gibson: Still squeaky clean after all these years

By Sean Daly and Steve Spears, Times staff writers
In print: Friday, April 25, 2008

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Twenty years ago, she was music's squeaky-clean pop princess, dancing innocently around MTV with catchy hits including Shake Your Love and Out of the Blue.

These days, Deborah Gibson still insists she lives a clean lifestyle, and now uses her teenage fame to promote her online reality singing competition (totalpopstar.com) and performance arts summer camp (Camp Electric Youth), which aim to help another generation of kids find similar fame.

She recently visited tampabay.com's Stuck in the '80s podcast to relive her glory years — and to explain that unexpected appearance in Playboy. Here are some highlights.

We're finding it hard calling you Deborah instead of Debbie. Maybe we'll just call you Gibson.

Everybody in my real life for the first 16 years of my life called me Deb or Deborah. The record company came along . . . and they made up names. They wanted to go with Debbie G or go with just "Deborah." So by the time they came back around to "Debbie Gibson," I was like, "Fine! I'll take it!"

Do you have sympathy for today's teen celebrities? Or do you mock them just like we do?

(Laughs) A little of both. . . . It definitely is a different world. But it also is a little ridiculous. Too many kids are getting the message that if you buy the right $3,000 handbag and dance on the right table in the right club, you'll have a career. The media is rewarding that behavior and handing people what appears — from the outside — as a career.

You still manage to stay out of the gossip circles. Are you really as squeaky clean as your image?

I've never touched a drug. I've actually never been drunk in my life. I've never had a whole drink; I don't like alcohol. On tour, whenever everyone else was going out clubbing, me and my dancers would go back to my room and play Pictionary.

So no to drugs, no to alcohol, but no problem appearing naked in Playboy ?

I got that call at (age) 18, 22, 25, 28, 30. . . . They came back to me in 2005 . . . and I just went "Why not?" . . . I came up with 8,000 creative ways of creating G-strings. Boobs and booty — a day on South Beach!

To hear the full interview, go to the Stuck in the '80s blog at blogs.tampabay.com/80s.