Today I was watching TV and I saw a commercial with Sarah McLaughlin. She has such a beautiful voice that I never thought about what she looks like. She’s very pretty. She is also thin.
As I followed this train of thought, it occurred to me that if she had been fat, chances are we never would have known how talented she is. As I thought through the other musicians I love, I came to realize that the vast majority of the people I listen to are thin. In my itunes library I have 897 artists. Admittedly, I do not know what all of them look like, but of the mainstream artists there in my hard drive I can only think of three or four that are legitimately fat. There are a few more that are air quotes “fat” (think Kelly Clarkson).
I wonder how many talented people we will never hear because of the inability of people to see past body shape. The music industry is hard enough to break into for someone who does not face that prejudice — it must be exponentially harder for someone who falls outside those rigid definitions of beauty that so many have embraced.
I wonder how many actors never get to practice their craft because casting directors can’t see past their own fat bias. How many writers never try to publish because they cannot get past the fear of being mocked in the press as a fat author. How many dancers never get a real shot because people cannot wrap their heads around the possibility that someone can be active and still fat. Who knows what beauty, what creation, will never come to fruition because of our prejudice.
This is why fat hatred, and racism, and homophobia, and misogyny, and every other form of blind group hatred are everyone’s problem. When only the privileged have a voice, we all lose.
Bravo!
I wonder about those things too.
I always wanted to be a singer, I have a nice voice that with training probably could have been amazing. But I knew that if I was fat I’d go no where, or that it’d be more work seeing as I already lived in the middle of nowhere Canada.
So I gave up on that dream very early on (as I was fat as a child and preteen and teen as well) and went on to other more sensible dreams… but in my heart I still know that I would have loved singing more than anything else.
I like Brother IZ … (pic)
What about Jennifer Hudson and Jordan Sparks?
The I-net has managed to stir the music industry up pretty throughly, turning everything on it’s head and shaking well. However, before the internets rise-to-power, it was often noted how hard it was to ‘make it’ in the industry. So many REALLY talented people who went by the wayside simply because they never got a shot or couldn’t get past the ‘discovery’ level. The level where some industry executive would decide that their sound/style/whatever wasn’t what people wanted to hear (As if an industry exec had any idea what people want to hear). Now add the cookie cutter ‘Must have Hawt looks’ aspect and multiply by a hostile anti-fat attitude promoted by the media in general and you get overproduced, fat free, background noise (there may actually be a food industry analogy here). The bland, tired, empty calories (If music IS food for the soul) that we get from Major Music today. ‘Fat Voices’ (if there is such a thing), no matter what field of expression you choose or what their level of talent in that field is, are excluded by default.
Art is SUPPOSED to be about emotion, thought and shared / sharing experience. It’s goal, if it has any, is usually to illustrate, demonstrate, or attempt to explain. Are we too believe that Fat People have and do none of these things? That life, as fat people experience it, is irrelevant? According to the Media, the answer would be ‘Yes’. And, your right, because of that we ALL lose.
I live in London (American expat, hi), and I have recently been saddened/annoyed by the promotional campaign for Adele, as it seems the decision has been made to not show her body, or even her whole face, in any of the promotional posters. Everytime I see the posters I think “fooling no one.” It reminds me of the way Carnie Wilson used to get covered up in the Wilson Phillips video to “disguise” her fatness.