| Teen Vogue - Spring 2001 "A Weighty Issue" My stomach was a ball of knots when someone in the wardrobe department (I'll call her Betty) began taking my measurements. It was only the fourth or fifth episode of Popular, and I was in the hair-and-makeup trailer, going over my lines for the next scene. "You have to lose weight," Betty ordered, rolling up the tape measure. "You've gotten very heavy, Tammy." My jaw dropped. My heart raced. I began to sweat icicles. "Your stomach is too big," she continued. "I saw some rolls around your middle in the last episode. It�s just not attractive. It�s getting hard to dress you. Your upper arms are really round, and I can�t put you in short sleeves. You have a nice hourglass figure, but it�s too big, especially in your hips. Make it a priority to lose weight and tone up. I tried to stay calm. Betty cocker her head to one side, and a smile leaked out. "I�m just trying to help you." Welcome to Hollywood. I had struggled with my body image most of my life. I spent my childhood, teens, and early 20s letter everything and everyone else dictate my emotions and self-esteem. And it was only a few years ago that I finally realized I didn�t want to live my life this way. It wasn�t easy coming to this conclusion, but once I got there, I wasn�t about to let anyone, not even in Hollywood, convince me otherwise. To give you an idea how I made peace with my weight and curves, I must start from the beginning. I was born into a family of farmers and raised in Lafayette, a small city in north central Indiana. There�s a church on every corner, and two big movie theaters. Driving fifteen minutes in any direction can place you in the middle of a cornfield. My father took off right after I was born, leaving my mother with two small children to raise on minimum wage. She was more concerned about feeding and clothing us than about the size of her jeans. I don�t think she could even afford jeans then. I never felt like I fit in anywhere. Some of the kids at school weren�t allowed to play with me. I could hear their mothers whispering, "She doesn�t have a father. Her mother�s divorced." So I filled my loneliness with food---candy, to be specific. When puberty set in, so did the calories. I started gaining weight by the week. I went from a training bra to a 32D in one summer, and cookies filled out the rest of me. I felt awful. Ugly. The boys, it seemed, had started to like the girls, and the cliques were permanently formed by seventh grade. If you were well liked, you were on side A. If you weren�t liked, you were on side B. I was over on side X somewhere, my snacks in hand. Did the boys notice me? Sure. Long enough to sing songs about "Wide-Load Tammy" in the hallways. So I stepped back mentally, away from the tormenting boys, the well-dressed cheerleaders, and into myself. I had begun the habit of wearing my mother�s shirts and sweaters, partly because they seemed to protect me from the verbal knives thrown at me and partly because they hid my huge breasts and growing weight. I felt like a giant, shapeless, androgynous balloon when I wore my protective shirts, and like a huge, naked set of breasts when I wore clothes that fit me. It wasn�t until my junior year that I settled into the drama club and found a home in a family of sharp minds, quick wit, and opinionated voices. The other students and I created our own safe Island of Misfits. By the time I graduated and moved to New York City, I was eighteen, five foot five, and 150 pounds. The acting academy I attended was a far cry from what I hoped to do with my career, so I dropped out one semester shy of graduating. I was now 165 pounds, completely miserable, lonely, and without a clue as to what my next step in life should be. At the suggestion of a friend, I went into therapy. Making minimum wage, I sometimes didn�t have money left over for food after paying New York rent and the therapist�s fees, so I would pack up scraps from whatever restaurant I happened to be working in (a survival technique Mom used to feed my sister and me when we were growing up). For two years, three times a week, I went to therapy. I confronted my most ugly childhood secret: I had been sexually abused for a decade. The more secrets I forced into the light of day, the less I felt a need to shove food in my mouth. I began easily shedding weight, like the winter coat you no longer need to protect you from the cold once spring rolls around. I was aware of my body now but not in a sexual way. More in the way of "Oh, I can see my feet." To society, however, I was like a different person. Men opened doors for me, rant to pick something up if I had dropped it, let me have the taxi if we both just flagged it down.... This actually kind of made me angry. I was the same person at 115 pounds that I had been at 165 pounds. I didn�t change my hair, my voice, my laugh. I was the exact same person, so why was everyone acting as if I was so much better than before? What was important to me was that I was finally at the point where I hated my body no longer. I was neither fat nor skinny, but simply grateful to be healthy. All those years of avoiding the mirrors were behind me, and finally I was looking into them, knowing that all of my childhood nightmares had begun to fade. It wasn�t that I was proud of the weight I lost: I was simply proud of the fact that I had battled the war with my body, my secrets, and emerged in one piece. By that time, four years after my move to the East Coast, I was bartending in Manhattan. A co-worker asked if I was interested in acting, and when I said yes, she sent me to meet with a manager who signed me on that afternoon. Within a few months I was booked on commercials. Not long after, I was cast in the series Popular. Life was going well, but the years of uncertainty left me with colitis, a stress-induced gastrointestinal condition. (The symptoms are rather unpleasant: It�s as if everything I ate had the same effect as eating pure bran and prunes, if you know what I mean). When I started Popular, I was unable to stay nourished and weighed all of 103 pounds. Luckily, after shooting we had two months of waiting to see if our pilot would get picked up, so I focused on getting healthy again. I followed a special diet and took medication, putting some meat back on my bones. By the time we started filming new episodes, I was up to 113 pounds. My size 0 from the Gap no longer fit, and I could fill out a size 4. So when Betty whipped out that measure tape in the trailer that day, my heart skipped a beat. Even though I had heard about Hollywood�s obsession with thinness, I never though I�d be seeing the issue face-to-face---especially at size 4. So instead of dutifully striving to meet those unrealistic standards, I challenged them. I spoke to one of our producers, a woman who was visibly angry. She told me not to lose the weight and to forget Betty�s remarks. Betty didn�t come back after the first season. I got support. It was so great. This town is filled with women several inches taller and several sizes smaller than me. Does it bother me? Yes---every time I look at my naked body, Betty�s critiques scream through my brain. I hear other young actresses cursing how "fat" they are. I�ve had more than one stylist say, "You�re rather big in the hips." I go to photo shoots where all the clothes are two sizes too small. And I remind you: I am a size 4. It�s so discouraging to see Hollywood�s definition of fat and thin. IT�s sad to see so many beautiful women looking like 12-year-old boys. I�m sick of carbohydrates and fat being taboo words. I spent years as a teen hiding my curves out of fear and shame. I am not going to do that anymore. I am proud to be a woman. It seems as though everyone wants to blame Hollywood for promoting an unhealthy body image, but I�m not sure Hollywood is to blame. I�d like to think it�s a "Which came first---the chicken or the egg?" situation. It�s true that Hollywood may churn out films and television shows starring skeletal actors. And it�s true that there are weight clauses in this industry. But I think back to the year I lost so much weight, and I realize how differently society treated me---on the street, in the stores---and it wasn�t in Hollywood. Hollywood is an industry that just wants to make a buck. Who buys into it? We do. The audience---society---buys the tickets and the diets of the day. It�s a vicious cycle. Who�s going to break the cycle? Hollywood is not that smart or brave. So let�s not blame Hollywood. We are stronger than that. We are not victims. You want to make a change? Prove it. You break the cycle. Now go. Get a milk shake and toast yourself. You are a woman. Look like one. |
| a weighty issue - tammy lynn michaels |
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