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Enough, Part 400. Body Shaming and the Theatre.

I feel like a friggen broken record, but my friend Lisa, who I’ve been talking with about weight and the theatre ever since we were in our early twenties in Les Miserables together, sent me an article…it’s at the bottom of this post…and as I read it, it hooked me BACK into the feeling I’d had the day before, when I wrote MELT OFF (the post just before this one).
The article led me through my whole life in the theatre as someone who was not “perfectly” sized for casting.
And, because I am 52 now, I feel like it’s time to get specific and truthful.

When I was 20 to 21 years old, I was seen for Les Miserables a record 9 times before I ended up getting it…this was my first time in the show.
The second time I did it, I played Madame Thenardier.
BUT the first time, I was a swing.
In the middle of this lengthy audition process, the resident director from New York advised me that it would be easier to cast me if I lost weight.
To play a non-dancer, who was clad in voluminous rags for most of the show.
I was a very tight 140 pounds.
I lost weight.

Then when I was in the show, I asked if I could audition to understudy Fantine and the musical supervisor, again from New York, told me that they were hiring someone who was thin.
And he told me, like he was helping me out…and schooling me. He literally rolled his eyes at my audacity.
This was AFTER I lost weight.

When I was in Beauty and the Beast, when I was 26/27 years old, I’d lost so much weight that my own mother didn’t recognize me when I came home to visit.
I’d lost all the weight during Showboat, just before getting cast in BATB, and it sent me into a part of my life that I almost lost myself in…and I know it was mostly from the way I starved myself, body AND soul.
I was sick a lot…Like, all the time…in body and soul.
Someone on the Beauty and the Beast creative staff…Canadian, this time…came into my dressing room, saw me in a body suit and fish nets…looked me up and down and pronounced that I was “almost there”,
I was 123 pounds.
Which for me, this weight is almost Skeletal.
This was the same person that would talk about how they saw someone just after a terrible sickness who’d lost a great deal of weight…and that they were about 10 pounds from their goal weight.
And everyone laughed.

“Almost there”
Me in Showboat after I lost 50 almost pounds. Look at the neckline of the blouse. I can’t remember EVERY being unhappier.

When I was hired at Canada’s Wonderland, just after college, they asked me to lose 20 pounds.
I was 139 pounds.
I lost weight.
They weighed us in every month.
Read that again.

Canada’s Wonderland. That’s Brent Wees beside me…who is awesome. Who never had to weigh in. Boys did NOT have to weigh in.

And when I started at Sheridan College (where it was particularly shitty) I was 17 years old…not even done forming, really…and I was told OVER and OVER again for three long years, from EVERY department, in every way imaginable, that I was too fat.
I think I was 150 pounds.
And, again, I was 17.

All these moments, plus a million more, are carved into my brain stem.
And it took me years to know myself.
And I still fight it everyday, in some small or large way.

As I keep saying over and over again?
Enough.
E-fucking-nough.

Is it any wonder how fucked up people are about their self images and eating habits?

This was part of the business that drove me away from musical theatre, to find my own way of expressing myself that didn’t hinge on my weight.
And I have never looked back.

It is time for artists of every shape, colour, background and size to play all the roles.
All.

It’s time for people to stop yo-yo dieting, crash dieting, and suffering from depression, anxiety, anorexia and bulimia, to name just a few long time effects of this kind of shaming.

Stop.
Be you.
Be big.
Be small.
Be you.

And open your fucking minds, creators, directors, AD’s and producers.

You cannot even imagine the glorious-ness that will inhabit your stages and screens.

Glorious.

In conclusion, I was asked to lose weight to play Dot in Sunday in the Park with George when I was in my thirties and refused…and lost the job.
I had just had my first ENOUGH and was a few years away from pulling out of musical theatre for almost good.
I was probably 170 pounds.
I forwarded a copy of Seurat’s “Young Woman Powdering Herself” ( the portrait featuring the woman Dot is based on) to the director (who was, heartbreakingly, a woman who struggled with her weight) alongside a note that said something like, “This woman is LITERALLY my size”.
No response, of course.

Young Woman Powdering Herself – George Seurat

Open your minds.
Open your hearts.
Theatre isn’t just for thin people…because life isn’t.

Cinderella can be round.
Audrey in Little Shop can be thic.
Laurie in Oklahoma can have size.
Juliet can wear a size 14.

And BEFORE you say it? Not every dance number needs a lift in it. And there are AMAZING dancers of size out there. Many many many.

People who are big have great stories and can tell them, too.
If I have to keep saying this till my head explodes?
I will.
If you are tired of reading it? Imagine how tired I am of having to say it…and to have lived it.

Here is the article:
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2021-05-15/broadyway-body-theater-fatphobia?fbclid=IwAR0CDpoX1BgQTxStpM6YIX8ui5q8Eom7cjj67bPSFPAT68waSXzWFC1MPts

 

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This Post Has 3 Comments

  1. This post really hit home for me on the reasons I stepped away from professional theatre (musical and otherwise). There is a certain toxicity in the industry that chooses to punish their artists if they can’t reach some subjective ideal. As a stage manager (who was, and is, not a physical “ideal”), I was often on the outskirts of conversations where amazing and talented performers (yes, mostly female) were picked apart for their figure. And it wasn’t just weight (though of course that was always up for discussion). Even if a performer could dance and sing your face off AND somehow lose the amount of weight the director, producer, and designers decided was appropriate, she could still be punished for have an “odd shape” (read: real shape) that didn’t work with a costume that was designed without any real person in mind. It was disgusting and it tainted all of the things that I loved about theatre going into it. Honestly, I’ve had difficulty even attending shows in recent years because I can never feel confident that the industry has its heart in the right place. And I should also mention that the worst I ever saw of this behaviour also took place at Sheridan College, where it seems that young people are brainwashed into hating themselves so that production heads (both in that environment and in the industry at large) can make a buck and build their own reputation. Thank you Sharron for speaking about this, and I’m sorry that it always seems like the victims of an abusive system have to be the ones to dismantle it. Keep healing and loving yourself!

  2. This happened to me too, in the theater, at auditions for parts on TV and Film, my agent was always on me, I was 123 lbs, really not a lot, looking back and when I look at my pics from back then I was cute. Sigh. I had it happen in other parts of my life too. As a travel agent believe it or not, I was told at one agency they didn’t want me at the front desk, I wasn’t attractive enough, if I lose weight they might move me back.
    I loved the movie The Devil Wears Prada, but one girl kept throwing the line at me, “size 10 is the new size 14,” well I was a size 14 and she knew it. I went on yet another diet, it never stayed off and I was always sick. This was as a travel agent, not as an actor. I felt it was all my fault, there was something very wrong with me.
    I found way my way out of it but it always haunts me, I will stick the bad thought out there before someone else does, my parents and brother always said I was beautiful and couldn’t understand where I got this from, I told them and they said I should ignore them, that I am beautiful. I think it is like reviews, you always remember the bad ones longer then the good ones.
    I think your a terrific actress, I love you as Flo in Frankie Drake and it is a joy to see your bright smile and beautiful face. Thank you for the fun and joy you have brought to my family.

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