Fat Pig!

I know I’ve been MIA here for a while now, but I have a really good excuse.

I’ve been hard at work on a production of Neil LaBute’s Fat Pig at the Repertory East Playhouse in Santa Clarita. I’m playing Helen alongside a really really great cast.. I’ll post a teaser trailer here as soon as it’s up.

We open July 10th and run for 3 weeks on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, until closing on Saturday, July 25th. Tickets are $18. -available at http://www.repeastplayhouse.org or by calling 661.288.000

I’ve been literally fantasizing about playing this part since I first read about Ashlie Atkinson in 2004. If you’re anywhere in the LA area- please please come and check us out!

Overweight Date

So I got a third email today about the casting of some new reality show starring plus-size women.
I mean absolutely no disrespect if you’ve gone in for the casting or think it’s awesome or whatever. I love reality TV just as much as everybody else does and watch way way way too much of it. For real.
However, in addition to my own near miss, I have the luxury of watching these shows with my sound mixer and story editor friends: people who get to be physically present at the scene of the crime and get to slice and dice it any way they see fit. They sit and reminisce about what actually happened on the shoots- Who actually said what and in which context; how it looks now; hypothesizing and analyzing what the invisible producers were scheming and how successful they were in creating a villain or a hero; who got frankenbit and how often, etc etc etc. What “really happened” and what we think we’re being led to believe. And now I do it constantly myself. The girl’s wearing a sweater in one shot, and not in the following. The hiccups in a person’s speech- the artfully inserted B-roll.. It’s all I can think about now.

Long story short, I’m WAY too much of a control freak for reality TV stardom.

And granted, none of this is fact, just my healthily paranoid opinion. TO ME, this Big Hearted Love Affair show sounds a whole lot like somebody’s idea of a hilarious joke.
Fancy romantic music plays… the camera caresses some beefcake as a sexy masculine voiceover begins …”You loved The Bachelor, but are you ready for a REAL MAN? This guy is totally hot, rich, smart, and kind to chickens. He’s looking for a woman as REAL as he is. But can he handle… A REAL… BIG… FAT… WOMAN!?!?!” the music screeches to a halt, something like Fat Bottom Girls, or Baby Got Back, or She’s a Brick House starts thumping as clips of fat women in tiny, shiny outfits eat and cavort and cry and throw things at eachother.

Because, if they’re scouring the internet like this for the fat ladies… obviously they need a lot of us.
The casting says “In this romantic competition of love and seduction, one big and beautiful woman will become the envy of all others and attain the love of lifetime.” And it SOUNDS like you might get to be the Bachelorette, with the studly studs all vying for your attention, but I will bet you one hundred and fifty dollars that the fats are the boogers in this nostril and not the finger.

I wish MTV or E! or VH1 or whatever MajorTelevisonNetwork is airing this show was interested in an uplifiting and stereotype busting party, but I just don’t have any faith that this show isn’t crossing it’s fingers and hoping to god it’s the next Rock of Love or Joe Millionaire or Douchebag School.

Actually, the more I think about Tool Academy, the more creeped out I get. What if, instead of “unsuspecting bad boys” being tossed into a Charm School… some genius is hoping for “unsuspecting fatty fats” thrown into a Biggest Loser competition where they’re not only competing for a “Shot at Love”, they’re also shooting for a “Shot at Life”. Or maybe there’ll just be one big orgy of feeding and trashyness. Nothin says lovin like a kiddie pool full of mayo… right? RIGHT??!!

Obviously it’s no news that reality TV production involves lots of tricky tricky trickery. These shows are dependent on deception and people making fools of themselves. Happy, well-adjusted people do NOT make good TV. And if you’re not crazy on your own, producers will “introduce situations” in an effort to make you crazy, and if THAT doesn’t work, then they rely on the good ol’ story editors to highlight and insert and delete and make you LOOK crazy.

Maybe I’m a hypercritical misanthrope but when I see shit like the “Reunion Special” for second season of the Rock of Love, when Destiney is forced to watch footage of her recently deceased father (like seriously 2 weeks recently deceased) and suffers a friggin hysterical shaking breakdown right there on national TV, VH1 chooses to AIR the shit and congratulates itself all the way to the bank. I just can’t believe that they’re not hoping that the fats will be next on the chopping block.

And I know that by watching the shows I’m feeding them and making the airwaves a terrible place. I know it. I’m sorry.
And I have to say that if I know you and you are or want to be on this show, you are a being far far far braver than I, and I don’t think you’re stupid or naive or trashy. I really sincerely wish you all the luck and strength in the universe, because I just don’t trust the motherfuckers. But I totally want to hear all about everything about it.

ETA: OH WAIT. OH FUCKING WAIT.

Pork Chop Pizzazz

Dude, I am way late to the party, but you can totally watch every episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race right here: http://www.logoonline.com/shows/dyn/rupauls_drag_race/series.jhtml

And naturally, I am in love with the fat one.
Victoria Pork Chop Parker is so effing gracious I can’t get over it. AND they’ve got a really interesting conversation about body image and the perception of fat going on in the green room video:
http://www.logoonline.com/video/misc/337592/under-the-hood-episode-1-fat-girls-sexy-shooters.jhtml?id=1603692

Amazing things that RuPaul has said that I’m not sure what they mean:
“I think you MAY need to take a pregnancy test.”
“I have consulted with the judges, my lawyers and my housekeeper…”

Also fantastic is how they use the word “fishy” to mean… feminine? Superfemme? ladylike? I don’t know, but I love it.

I made a dress!

Well, altered it anyway.

I’m pretty POed that I didn’t take a ‘before’ picture, but I found this blousy plaid thing at the thrift store and thought I’d monkey around. It looked like a nightgown, but itchier. Kind of like this:

But plaid. And with dolman sleeves.
I don’t think it was a nightshirt originally intended for a fat body because my boobs made the front hem hike up
like 7 inches. I thought hemming the back to make it even would be a disaster because the stripes would make the whole fiasco completely obvious and just wearing a belt looked weird too.

I was just going to sew down the sides and make it a little more fitted, but it had pockets! I didn’t want to hack those out, so I decided to make a whole bunch of little pleats.

There were pleats at the shoulders already, so I just ironed them flat and pinned them at the waist where I wanted the thing smaller. The plaid was kind of helpful at that point because I just had to start sewing at the red stripe and end a little above the white ones.

I think I broke my sewing machine, so I just sat down with a needle and thread and had at it while I watched 5 or 6 episodes of Intervention on YouTube.

I made like 5 pleats (or “pintucks” apparently) under each boob and then 10 more across the back. And magically the back hem shrank up. Now there’s only like a 2 inch difference between front and back hems. And that’s close enough for me!

Galloping away from the self timer. Why is this the only photo that’s in focus?

It’s clearly not perfect and I intend to wear it only in dimly lit locations, but I am also pretty damn proud of myself and my little needle and thread.

Me and my duct tape dressform with the next experiment.

Hand-me-down Haute Couture.

AAAMEN to Lesley at Fatshionista and the The Rotund with their posts on dressing like YOU.
I’ve been thinking about this a shitload too.
I kind of have a problem with “dressing for your shape”. To me it means “tricking people into thinking you’re less fat.” It means forgetting about what you like and tossing out what you want people to think about when they look at you, all in the hope that they will not be thinking about your fat.

Who cares. If they care about fat, they’re going to see it whether you swathe it in jersey or not. Whether you wear all black and structured everything or not, if rolls on other people’s backsides are the stuff that keeps them up at night, IT’S WHAT THEY’RE GONNA SEE. Big deal.
So what? People like that are toxic and wastes of space. Quit trying to make them happy. I say quit trying to make ANYBODY happy. Make you happy. It’s the only thing you can do anyway.

Growing up, I was the oldest, but my family didn’t have a lot of money, so with the exception of 2 or 3 outfits that grandma bought, all of my clothing came in giant garbage bags from the neighbors with older kids.
I mean they were hand-me-downs transported in garbage bags. They weren’t dumpster trophies. Although that would have made a way better story.
Anyway, I thought this was AWESOME. My mom pretty much gave me free reign to dress myself and I was all about wearing ridiculous crap to school just because I liked the texture of the turd colored knee socks. One of my very favorite outfits was a short-sleeved brown floral cotton top with a matching ankle-length patchwork (all patches being variations of brown floral) skirt. The brown was the same color as the haircut I’d given myself, and I was thrilled with the way that everything matched. It was total hippie 70’s, and I wore it to 4th grade in the super-rad late 80’s. I didn’t have a lot of friends. Okay, ANY friends.
The other girls were busy in fuschia bike shorts with little skirts sewn on top, and I had more in common with Laura Ingalls .. or Nancy Drew. Or Trixie Belden, depending which garbage bag I had been pawing through.
I vividly remember Dana Vanderschaaf asking me why I was wearing knee socks and penny loafers. It was because I found them in the garbage bag and they fit just perfectly! They were ribbed and the nylon was squinchy and they had tassels!! “My mom forces me.” That’s what I told her.
She still didn’t invite me to her birthday party.

Anyway, in middle school we moved, and I kept wearing my dad’s jeans and my mom’s sweaters from the 60’s and 70’s and it still didn’t cost me anything, but suddenly I had a bunch of friends!! My clothes were COOL! Or more accurately, I finally met some kindred spirits who could recognize the glory that was a corduroy FFA jacket with my Dad’s name and 1969 stitched on the side. (Dad was the Vice President!)

The moral of the story is: the haters are gonna hate. Shockerooney. Maybe I’m crazy, maybe it’s superficial and naive, but I can’t be the only one who can make people go away by refusing to think about them. I’ve forgotten all my “embarassing moments”. Why on earth would a person dwell on something that makes them feel terrible? If that’s the dress you were wearing when you did something monumentally and horrifically awful, GET RID OF IT! Or reframe the situation or hack it in half and make it into a headband. Just quit living there.

The girls I see on fatshionista and wardrobe remix, the ones who make my jaws drop every time they post their mugs are the ones who don’t ask for permission. They don’t attempt to appease the masses; they don’t assume that anything is off limits. There’s nothing that “shouldn’t be done”, nothing their fill-in-the-blanks are “too big for”. No doors are closed, no options are inaccessible. They shop in catalogs and the old stand by brick and mortars, they scour thrift stores and ebay, friend’s closets and museum gift shops.

For a good 7 or 8 years, once I was larger than a size 14, I gave up on thrift stores. I shoved them into the same category as Wet Seal and Anthropologie. Why on earth would I set foot in a store that doesn’t carry my size? But the fatshionistas and a few real life friends busted me out of my little box.
“Do you think no one was fat before 1990?” “Where do you think old Lane Bryant clothing goes? It doesn’t just vanish out of fat people’s closets…” “Where do you think 6-foot-tall, 300 lb female impersonators find their first sequined dream?”
Granted, I’m partial to obnoxious prints and dramatic EVERything, but I personally think the key to looking frigging incredible is to decide what you want to look like. Who do you admire? What do you want people to be reminded of when they look at you? Marilyn? Diane Keaton? Ally Sheedy, Bettie Page, Richard Nixon? Pick something!
And then shop for things that make you happy. Is it too small? Says who? What if you wore it backwards? Inside out? Make it a dress!

Fat Fashion, even more loudly than straight-size fashion, demands creativity. No, you’re NOT going to find exactly what you want in your size. Big deal. Now, what are you going to do about it?

Mariko Takahashi’s Fitness Video for Being Appraised as an “Ex-Fat Girl” & a Memorial of Sorts.

Mariko Takahashi’s Fitness Video for Being Appraised as an “Ex-Fat Girl”

So this freaky little video has been around a long long time, and I was mesmerized from the get-go. But I found out yesterday, that it’s purported to be a word-for-word parody of Susan Powter’s first “Stop the Insanity!” video. And now I love it even more.

This is the only early-90’s Susan Powter video I could find:

Obviously not the one parodied, but the “Ex-Fat Girl” photos are eerily similar aren’t they?

Poking around for more info, I found out that Nagi Noda, the jaw-droppingly talented video director, passed away last weekend.
My lord, the things that brewed in her head… Catwalk Shadows.. Hair Hats…



More hair hats if you need.

aaron stewart ahn, posted at antville

I was lucky enough to have met Nagi. It was one of the more interesting evenings in my life. What was supposed to be a short chat over coffee turned into an up til 3am ramble on just about everything. One time meeting a person is never enough, but she was extremely endearing.

Nagi exuded and lived art, as it was something to be lived. It made me feel like an amateur – so connected was her feeling about life invested in what she wanted to do. She had no barriers, pretty much laid as much of her life story in our awkward English (littered with impressive words) as she could. She talked about the unfairness of being a female director, how she felt she had to act twenty times as tough as she was just to get the modicum of respect necessary to do her job. She told me about the start of her artistic life lived with her parents – both artists themselves who had given her a sense of how difficult it can be to navigate the world of art. She also talked about the need for artists to not be divorced from the divine, past lives, a recent trip to Angkor Wat so full of meaning – which planted the seed in my head which led to me shooting there in my last video.

The drawing above was something she put down on the napkin in front of me – she told me it was the secret to the universe, but I shouldn’t tell anyone. I think it’s ok now. She said most of us look out at the world, but if you close your eyes and look up, you’re looking at the universe through your mind, looking at the universe.

She struck me as free spirited, eccentric, and beneath it all incredibly strong. In one evening in her company she affected me greatly. I miss her.

Rachel Pally Part Deux

Well, I went to the sale, and it was awesome and I am utterly PISSED OFF at myself.
It was a total peer pressure madhouse in there!! The clothing was gorgeous, but NOTHING cost less than $80. EIGHTY BUCKS!!
But I’m wandering around, and I figure, I’m there, I might as well try things on… So I do, and I feel like a princess, and I think, “well, it is normally a $260 dress… It is really really nice. I remember the day I was goofing off in the dressing room at Nordstrom (anybody else do that?). It’s not like I can buy anything, so I just try the fabulous things on and prance about in front of the mirrors, pretending I have occasion and means to wear clothing like this. Anyway, this particular dress I’m holding (now at 70%) off, is exactly the dress I was crazy about the most like 5 months ago on that dressing room escapade.
And there are other women there with ARMFULS of clothing. I run into my friend who shows me all $600 worth of the stuff she’s getting. She’s spending SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS!!
I start rationalizing/ freaking out: WHAT IF I DON’T GET THIS DRESS (and also this other one)??? WHAT IF i CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT IT?? WHAT IF THERE’S NEVER ANY OTHER DRESSES FOR ME TO WEAR EVER EVER AGAIN!?? EVER!!?
So I buy the fucking things and run out of there and proceed to beat myself up for the next 3 days.
$210 is half the tuition of a voiceover class. It’s more than I ever intend to spend on a digital camera (I would like one slightly smaller than the brick of cream cheese I currently use). RENT is due in another 2 weeks. The smartcar place called and said my smartcar is going to be arriving far sooner than I thought it would. How am I possibly going to afford it??!!
WHAT HAVE I DONE!!!??
Blugghh.
But it’s friggin DONE already. You can’t return dresses you’ve bought at a sample sale.
And they’re really really nice dresses…
I’m going to wear those dresses every single day for the next six months, and then it will be as if I’m only paying $1.16 per day. That’s if I wear them both every day. And I will. I’ll have a mid-afternoon costume change. And people will think I’m much less strange than if they just saw me in the same exact dress every day.
The green print dress:

and the Statue of Liberty Dress:

which I so lovingly chopped my feet off in.

If you’d like to experience the same self-flagellation as I currently am, you can visit the ADDITIONAL day of the sale tomorrow 8/23 from 10 to 5. All the details are on the flyer in the last post.

Rachel Pally sample sale!

I’ve never been to a sample sale before, but someone posted about this on fatshionista and I had to spread the word.

I’m going to try and go tomorrow.
Rachel Pally is normally way way way out of my price range, but I found a wrap top at Nordstrom Rack a month or so ago…

I wore it to my high school reunion. The fit is AMAZING and everything’s in this gorgeous rayon jersey. (The LA Times calls it “buttery” on her press page). She’s one of the few (but growing!) designers doing interesting things for plus sizes.
I figure it can’t hurt to try my luck!
Maybe I’ll see some of you there!

Sigh…

This is Christan Cantwell.

I want him to marry me. I think he’s already married. To another shotputter at that, but a girl can dream…

If you haven’t seen this , you should look at it. It kinda cracks your head open to realize that each of these people are perfect. They’re uniquely suited and perfectly designed to accomplish the feats that they do. And they’re all different.

It’s really really stupid that “athletic build” means “shaped like a swimmer or a track star”…

Those stats listed are really incredible: the shotputter’s biceps measure the same as the cyclist’s thighs; the marathoner can only bench press 65 pounds; and I really get a kick that these 2 eat roughly the same amount of calories every day:

Jesus and CNN

I get a lot of really really incredible and moving letters from you guys – I really wish I could respond to more of them and I know that sounds totally cheezy, and I HATE it when people say crap like that, but it’s kind of overwhelming trying to follow up and give everybody the attention they deserve. That said, I do read absolutely everything and I feel really honored and privileged and teary-faced to be let into your lives in that small way.

Last week “News To Me” on CNN Headline News reran the piece they did on me last year and I got a new wave of letters from amazing people.
I forwarded one of them on to an associate producer for the show to say thanks and they put up a blog about it!
http://ntm.blogs.cnn.com/2008/07/17/sometimes-one-email-is-worth-a-thousand-ratings-points/

In other news, my mother is very glad to see that Jesus has made it into my top friends on MySpace.
Mom: Joy! Your brother told me that Jesus is your friend again!
Me: What? Oh. Yeah, I rearranged my page a little…
Mom: Joy, I am SO GLAD. He IS your friend, you know.
Me: I know, Ma.
Mom: Just CALL on him!!
Me: Ok.

Although… I just realized I have more myspace friends than Jesus does. What do you think that means?