4 out of 5 women hate their bodies.
I can't emphasize how women seeing themselves as worthy of love just as they are can change the world. It lets them become shiny and lovely and share that beauty with everyone around them. It's important for all of us.
I'm so proud of Carson Kressley. What a lovely soul. Great, great show. Made me teary and produced instant results in the woman featured and all the people who saw her confidence.
So here's yet another Commune story I've withheld...
I'm naked in the film, for a very specific reason. When we figured out how fast we were going to shoot, I could have gone on a typical actor diet and lost two sizes to be in an "acceptable" female actor range. But instead producer Heidi and star Chauntal and I had a sit-down, and I asked for future support knowing I how I was going to be attacked, and we decided I was going to stay a size 14 (the average size of women in America) and have a knock-down sexy naked sex scene.
Of course, by the time shooting was done I was so stressed I couldn't keep weight on, and was down to a 12 by the time we shot the scene with Trevor. And now in Post-production I'm a 10. Keep in mind, beautiful Kate Winslet was an 8 in Titanic when she was eventually hounded into losing another 35 pounds.
Here's the part where we've ALL been brainwashed by the media, and we decided to use my body as a tool to start undoing it.
Watching the rough cut of The Commune with Chauntal's male 29 year old friend, he saw the pool scene where I walk out of it wet, anonymously naked, as a size 14. He piped up in his outraged Brooklyn accent "Who put Kathy Bates in the film?"
Chauntal patted my leg and shook her head, and we said nothing as my heart sank to my feet.
Theeeen when we got to my character's sex scene and he found out this cut did NOT include my nudity, he was outraged and wanted to see it RIGHT NOW. And then said I could do a sex scene in his next movie, and showed me the last model-thin girl who'd done some kind of doggie-style sex scene in some short he directed for Youtube. Which was definitely in his mind a compliment to me, and something he was proud of and wanted me to be a part of.
So with sexy glamorous clothes on, in my full confidence, doing a slow sensual dance with a hot specimen of a man lusting after me onscreen, I was completely desirable. Different context, same body, same viewer thinking he should or shouldn't be attracted to my body.
Sooooo interesting. Don't think THAT's not going into the press release.
And a new pick-up line was established: "Elisabeth, step out of a pool naked for me."
2 comments:
That is very interesting. Thank you for posting about your experience. As someone who is an actress but does not have the "model-perfect" body, I often struggle in considering myself for a "sexy" role. But sexy is indeed in the eye of the beholder, no?
First of all, anonymous Brooklyn director is rude.
Second, HTLGN is such a great idea for a show. With all the "beauty-centric" reality TV on lately (America's Next Top Model, Project Runway, Janice Dickinson, Girls Next Door, Extreme Makeover...I could go on, yikes) this seems like just the thing to counteract the media's generally fucked standards.
I remember last year when Britney performed her weird dance on the MTV Awards and all the headlines afterwards were variations on cruel puns calling her fat (the NY Post famously ran the charming headline "Lard and Clear"). I remember thinking that there are many things one could call Ms. Spears -- "overrated", "troubled", "possibly possessing the IQ of a walnut" -- but there's no way in hell she could even remotely be described as overweight. Except by the American media, of course.
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