My traumatized-baby-opera-singer former self MUST be healing y’all – Robin Young is on NPR’s Here & Now talking about my NYC City Council testimony — specifically how I have been encouraged to develop an ED & have bariatric surgery throughout my career.
As this bill prohibiting height and weight discrimination in New York City continues to gain press and momentum — I have waves of fear and elation, kind of rudely intermingled. I think the quote keeps getting used, simply because it’s a pretty shocking thing to hear. It should be shocking. But — it really happened. It’s very healing to be able to name it, and then have that effort amplified.
In rehearsal rooms, in front of important people — sometimes *by* the important people. In costume fittings. Behind closed doors in offices. In lessons. In the living rooms of coaches. From donors at mandatory events. On the lips of stages — from directors in the house. If you want to go down the trauma rabbit-hole, read this comprehensive article by Zach Finkelstein at Middle Class Artist, or the companion op-ed I wrote.
Now — it doesn’t happen so blatantly to me, or on such a regular basis as when I was an emerging artist (literally called a “young artist” in opera-speak, for the young artist programs, or apprenticeships, which are part of the industry talent pipeline). When you are a young artist in grad school or in a Y.A.P.— you’re still viewed as being “prepared for the industry”. Therefore — most of the stigma coming at you is coming from good intentions. It’s coming from the perspective of mentors and those who intimately know the industry, trying to prepare you for the “realities” of the industry. I talk about this often as a cycle of trauma that regularly goes unbroken by those who have been traumatized — singers and industry players who eventually shift into teaching, become self-appointed enforcers of anti-fatness. It’s a complicated thing for me to talk about personally — most of the mentors and teachers I had throughout my training, I respect and admire immensely. I hope they follow my career progress and political work with the understanding that I love and appreciate them dearly, but I view it as my responsibility to help break the cycle for the next generation of singers.
And although the constant stigma a young artist faces is intense, frequent, and quite blatant — let us not forget that the stigma remains when you are a fully-formed, professional artist. It shape-shifts. You may no longer be singing in masterclasses where your body is publicly discussed — but those conversations continue — about you — behind closed doors. We know this because we see who is on stage. The industry can claim that the handful of fat singer tokens means everything is all good — but until the percentages of fat people in the world are more appropriately represented, until the percentages of fat singers in this industry are hired in more appropriate numbers, we have failed. Until teachers and managers and admin stop stigmatizing and traumatizing fat singers under the guise of helping them, we have failed. Until casting shifts its incredibly regressive attitudes about what kind of bodies should be allowed on stage, what kind of body is worthy of playing a love interest, what kind of body and artist and human belongs on the programs and the billboards out front — we have failed. Until this industry as a whole comes to terms with how deeply intersectional this issue is — that if you are welcoming racial diversity, yet still controlling and stigmatizing the bodies of those artists — we have failed completely.
When I do start to feel scared about my vulnerability as a freelance contractor out here being honest about an industry that normalizes stigma (and trauma :/) — I think about this little chicky. She didn’t have a fat politic. She even felt like the industry players who regularly stigmatized her for her weight, were right — that she owed her talent a different body. But she knew something about it felt incredibly wrong. The humiliation — of your body being constantly brought up at work. Your body being fair game in every way — under the guise of helping you to be a better artist. What a mind f**k. I spent a long time floating out of my body at work — glassy eyes stinging with tears that had to be hidden. I spent a long time not having the political education to know that what was happening to me was wrong — that what was happening to me should have been illegal.
Well I know now. Trauma is not the admission price we pay to make art.
Tracy sings in the finals of Operalia 2013 at the Teatro Filarmonico di Verona.