As a Canadian orchestra shuts down over body fascism and Gemma Arterton talks about studio pressure to lose weight, Nicole Mowbray reports on the stars taking a stand.
‘Although almost all of our vocalists are fit and slim...’ the email read, ‘two of our featured singers were not and we would hope that they would refrain from wearing tight-fitting dresses and use loose dresses instead.’ In a note to members last week – which subsequently went viral – management at the Toronto-based Sheraton Cadwell Orchestra declared: ‘Your image is our image. If you look good, we look good too.’
The message backfired. When the furious vocalists posted it online, accusing the organisation of ‘fat-shaming’, they encouraged the outraged to ‘riot’ about the post and made international news. Sheraton Cadwell singer Sydney Dunitz publicly wrote to orchestra general manager Andrew Chong, saying: ‘Many struggle with weight, many struggle with eating disorders, many are in the process of getting fit, many just plain enjoy their bodies as they are. That says nothing about their musical ability... This email is bullying.’ The organisation subsequently apologised and announced it is disbanding after several executives resigned in protest.
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Fat-shaming is nothing new, but the Sheraton Cadwell musicians are just the latest group of women to call out the archaic standards governing how women are ‘supposed’ to look – with particular reference to their weight. In a recent podcast for The Guilty Feminist, actor Gemma Arterton revealed the lengths gone to by Hollywood studios to ensure their female stars are slim, claiming one flew a personal trainer out to her hotel to film her exercising to ensure she did it. Arterton also claimed producers would measure her and comment on her food intake. ‘They’d call up the personal trainer at like nine at night going: “Is she in the gym? And if she isn’t, why?”’ she said.
Elsewhere, Sophie Turner recently said in a magazine interview that she has ‘often’ been asked to lose weight for roles ‘even though it has nothing to do with the character’, and last month Chloë Grace Moretz hit the headlines when she revealed a co-star – a man in his twenties who she didn’t name – told her that while she may have been his love interest on-screen, she could never be so in real life as she was ‘too big’. She was 15 at the time.
Amy Schumer has said that she, too, fell prey to the pressure to lose weight at the start of her career, but wouldn’t do it again. ‘I feel very good in my own skin,’ she explained. ‘I feel strong. I feel healthy. I do. I feel sexy.’
Likewise, Jennifer Lawrence – who along with Amanda Seyfried has also spoken out about being pressured to slim down – now makes her feelings very clear to anyone who dares to mention her weight: ‘If anybody even tries to whisper the word “diet”, I’m like, 'You can go fuck yourself.''
With so many female stars taking a stand against the expectation they need to maintain a body size which may be unrealistic or unhealthy, the tide is slowly beginning to turn. Actors like Melissa McCarthy and Schumer, who write their own films or make them via their own production companies,
are changing the perception that audiences only respond to skinny women – in fact, their success bears testament to the pleasure viewers take in watching stars who come in different shapes and sizes.
There are other signs of hope too.The film Patti Cake$, out last week, tells the story of a female rapper defying conventions of how a performer should look (she’s both white and overweight), and was a huge hit
at the Sundance Film Festival. And Chloë Grace Moretz stars in an upcoming animated film, Red Shoes And The 7 Dwarfs, which is being marketed as being about ‘a princess who doesn’t fit into the celebrity world of princesses – or their dress size’.
So let’s just hope this isn’t the last we hear of the Sheraton Cadwell singers and their comeback is loud and proud.
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