When is the last time you saw someone who looked like you on a Broadway stage?
Diverse representation in media is something that Millennials ™ are hyper conscious of, and something that both the Film/TV and Modeling industries are slowly but surely working to correct. However, despite the Ashley Grahams of the world, slaying a size 16 bathing suit on the cover of Sports Illustrated, despite the Mindy Kalings, America Ferrerras, Raven Simones, Melissa McCarthys and Rebel Wilsons of Hollywood, Broadway can’t get it together to cast a woman of size unless she’s the butt of a joke or a snowman.
Perhaps it’s just an actor thing, but, when I see a show, I always look to see if I can find someone who looks like me on the stage. More often than not, I search through the cast to no avail. Sometimes I get to see artists like Bonnie Milligan, Lindsay Mendez, Keala Settle, and Alysha Umphress get a chance to slay a role that has nothing to do with her dress size, but it's like a glimmer of sunshine in a February snow storm. Rare. Even more so if I'm looking at the dancing ensemble - and if you've seen Lizzo's backup girls, you know we out here.
Now, I am a 5’9” white woman who weighs about 185 (or 170 if you ask the DMV… why do we do that?) and I often joke that I was built less like a Broadway diva and more like a German farm girl, but I was captain of the cheer team in high school, I was in a sorority in college, and I have had my fair share of male attention, so why can’t a girl like me be in the ensemble of Bring It On or Legally Blonde? For that matter, my body exists in the world, so why can’t it be on stage?
I read an opinion piece somewhere (hi hello, I’m another millennial coming at you with a vague conversational internet reference - sorry ‘bout it), that the reason Broadway casts thin, able-bodied, beautiful people is because it’s supposed to be an escape from reality for the audience. This guy (I assume it’s a guy, it’s always a guy) said, audiences don’t want to see regular people, they want to be fed a fantasy. Well I call bullshit. Maybe that was true in the 1920s bud, but in 2019 we’re seeing businesses like Victoria’s Secret failing because of that same broken logic. Stop selling unattainable fantasy, and start telling stories of the real human experience. It works. I promise. Have you seen Come From Away?
Broadway’s fat-phobia doesn’t start and end with casting though. I saw Mean Girls on Wednesday (and quickly realized I don’t have enough pink in my wardrobe). The direction, design, writing and performances were all stunning. Tina Fey’s adaptation of the movie even removed some slut-shaming language and gifted the otherwise stereotypical female characters with several redeeming and empowering moments. Yet, despite its newfound social awareness, the one thing the creative team thought they could still joke about was fatness and - wait for it - disordered eating.
The show opens with a joke about the 16 year old protagonist finally getting to see an “obese person” when she moves to Chicago from the Kenyan village her parents have been working in, then it moves to the high school cafeteria where we see two cliques - “girls who eat their feelings / and girls who don't eat” - explicitly and enthusiastically acting out their eating disorders, to which the vocalist reacts, “I like eating birthday cake around them - makes them crazy.” Hello trigger warning. There is also a major plot line wherein the new girl gets revenge on the queen bee by *gasp* secretly making her gain weight so that she loses her “hotness,” so naturally, they put the actor in a fat suit, employing overt physical comedy to make the audience laugh at her newly voluptuous ass. Meanwhile, the closest thing they had to a curvy woman on stage was the guy they dressed up as a girl for the Junior Class trust fall scene.
First of all, in a 2018 rewrite, why does the social capital of these characters depend on their waistline? (Again I refer to Ashley Graham’s SI Swimsuit cover!) But more importantly, why would it ever be okay to joke about mental illness? I wish this was the exception, but musical theatre is rife with material that is triggering for young women of size and young women who suffer from various mental conditions derived from diet, exercise and appearance. In fact, I just choreographed a production of Fame Jr. and it suffers from the same poor taste in humor, crafting the character Mabel entirely out of bulimia jokes and body-shaming. (Explain that to a cast of 14 year olds!) Now, I can understand a 90s show dealing with the issue in a less than tactful way (as long as we agree never to produce it again without a serious rewrite) but for shows written in the millenium? Why does Broadway still think that fatness is funny?
Women of size are exactly that: women. Women who deserve coming-of-age stories, love stories, adventure stories, redemption stories. Stories that have nothing to do with their bodies. Stories that have nothing to do with their role in the male fantasy. And I’m going to take the radical position that Broadway is responsible for giving them these stories - or, at the very least, not making women’s bodies the subject of their lazy writing.
The theater community prides itself on being a liberal safe haven and a community at the forefront of social change, but if we refuse to include women of size, if we refuse them the representation they deserve, we have no business taking the moral high ground. Furthermore, if we actively exclude and taunt them, we have no business making art at all.
Emma Lou DeLaney is an actor, dog mom, and ex-honors student, who just got a new computer and is reveling in the fact she can type with more than just her two big thumbs. Follow her on instagram at @emma_lou_delaney
Comments