Good news … It’s coming back! I’ve had some REAL auditions and a background gig or two. But. I run into “the” problem. I have lost weight during Covid. A lot. That being said, I’m still curvy. I will always be curvy, no matter how thin I get. So, here’s a story about a recent shoot. Wardrobe doesn’t like the clothes I have. Because of the weight loss, they are swimming on me. They give me a size four skirt. I’ve never worn a four in my life. I won’t wear a four when I’m dead. So, it doesn’t work, and, despite 20+ pounds I’ve dropped, I now feel uncomfortably large. There are some seven women on set. I’m the heaviest and the only one with a chest to speak of. The wardrobe folks scale up to a size nine, which mostly fits but the waistband cuts into my stomach. I may be lighter than I was in high school but I have the body of, umm, a “middle aged” woman. I’m thick in the middle and no amount of weight loss seems to help that. Wardrobe is not pleased. They give me this medieval girdle (metal stays included) to “flatten” my unappealing tummy roll (which would have been less noticeable in a larger size). Then they give me a form-fitting sweater which has to be tucked in. So here I am, too-tight skirt, a tucked in sweater (which makes my chest look huge). They give me a shrug to cover up in and say to heck with it. Five costume changes later I have worn the shrug with every change. I pull it around me and feel fat and ugly and horrible. Know this: I have lived with my body my entire life. I know how to dress it. Clothing which is tailored but not tight. V-necks. Lengthen the torso by rarely tucking in tops. So, I feel good in my own gear. I didn’t feel good on this shoot. I felt self-conscious and actually in some pain (the girdle really hurt in the late hours). I know there is a look that they were going for. I know that in this business, where so many women clock in at very (very very) low weights the wardrobe folks aren’t used to dressing someone who wears double digit clothing sizes. I know that there is an audience expectation. Men of a certain age can have a gut hanging out over their belts (pretty much half the men on this shoot did) but women of any age have to appear attractive and desirable and aspirationally perfect. Reality be darned. I may have worked in dozens of offices, but in this office the men look like guys on the street and the women look like they walked out of a fashion magazine. I know I have my own issues about food and weight and everything, but a good deal of that does come from external sources. Honestly, it can be exausting. Why can’t we say that an actor is an actor is an actor and what they look like is not a factor.
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