"Stunningly attractive girl, MUST be at least 5"5 and MUST have great legs"
It's so helpful that they're so straightforward and specific about what they want. If only everything in life was as clear cut as casting.
Half-heartedly, I rang up the agency. Its about as far from speed dial on my phone as you could possibly get, I have to trudge through my whole phonebook until I see a .tel style cryptic name that I dread flashing up on my phone when I get a call - or WORSE 'unknown number'. God, so offensive. I always answer in the most cautious way, speaking in the voice of a grown up that I don't recognise as my own.
"HELLO?!"
But this time Im ringing, which is bad in a different way, but at least I know what to expect.
"Hi...I just got the breakdown for........ '.TEL'....and, the beautiful woman bit aside, I am actually JUST 5"2..."
I thought, 'if you ever fucking looked at my CV, I wouldnt need to explain this to you'.
"OK! We'll check that out and be in touch."
I don't really want to go anyway. The ignominy of commercial castings. Having to sit there conspicuously next to a bored but effortlessly PERFECT model and sometimes even go in and audition with them. I remember once I came dressed in an oversize pair of jeans and had to 'perform' walking around in a circle (this was meant to evoke walking around some European city-it was T-Mobile) with this Magnum ad type girl. I never felt my femininity more compromised. Never again, I thought. Skirts and dresses all the way. Not that that really made any difference.
In a perverse way, I enjoy the 'us and them' feel when auditioning with models. It's probably the only moment in castings when I feel legitimate as an actress.
So I don't want to go. I don't want to have to lug a pair of high heels (that I only wear for castings) around university.
A voicemail magically appears on my phone. His voice is groaning with apology and embarrassment...he knows he's been incompetent. The casting is off, they 'definitely' want someone tall... 'although, 5ft2 is a perfect height!'... ?
I thought it odd that he imagined I could be offended that my height had worked against me. I mean, weight, yes; but height?! I can't do anything about my height; my lifestyle and dignity aren't really compromised if Im not right on a basis of height, but weight is a different story...
What I am about to tell you is probably the biggest milestone moment of my acting career. Not just that, it's one of the most significant things that has ever happened to me and I know this is pathetic, you will see, but for various reasons, this is unfortunately just the case.
Almost a year ago I was having tense relations with my mother. There is always an underlying level of tension ever since her disastrous behaviour in my late childhood. A new form of this behaviour had surfaced last year, but this had more of less ended. No, the tension was caused by me feeling criticised silently by her every time I saw her. I felt her eyes glazing all over me - what I was wearing, what my hair was like, but more potently, what my figure was like. I felt I couldn't please her. I simply wasn't thin enough. I hated her for it, I hated myself vehemently for being so affected by it. I was persecuted by the feeling that I was huge, flabby, over-weight.
One phonecall she asked me if I had put on weight. I leaped to my defence:
"NO, no NO I don't think so/I've always been this size/I'm wearing all the same clothes I ALWAYS wear and have worn for years!!"
Deep down I felt completely ill-equipped to answer this question. I felt like I was a few pounds heavier, but was so riddled with self-doubt and anxiety anyway that if someone turned round and said I had lost loads of weight, I would probably have been persuaded. My sense of reality in respect to myself is.... just not clear.
I railed at my mother. I shouted at her and told her how I felt she picked at me and how she had made me feel exactly how her mother made her feel: not good enough. The telephone call ended in hot, angry tears. It was a Saturday night. My boyfriend soothed me. I felt so grateful for him and glad that one person was happy with the way I was, even if both my mother and I weren't. I received a text from her that read something like this:
"I wasn't asking because of me. Julia had dinner with J and they were talking about what a wonderful actress you were and how sad it was that you hadn't had any work and J said that it was because he thought you had put on weight and that unfortunately set the odds against you. I had to ask! Dont tell Julia I told you, she'll get into trouble with J..."
J is my agent, right? I never speak to him, or see him but for once a year. All my communication is done through his assistants. I guess I won't really need to explain how betrayed I felt, how furious and above all, hurt.
My boyfriend put me in the bath. I screamed at the injustice of it, what a load of tossers talking about me behind my back and why didnt J have the decency to confront ME about it. I concluded I would ring in the morning, storm into the office by lunch and tower over his desk with an incriminating finger pointing at him and anyone else in the room who looked at me in any other way than fear and tell him finally what I thought of him and where he could stuff his top acting agency. Up my fucking obese arse. Oh yeah, because J himself is fucking OBESE. nO, no fucking... just obese. If I say fucking it sounds like an exaggeration.
When I had snivelled once or twice and washed my armpits, I developed my argument on a wider scale to rail at the industry in general. Don't think my lightness of tone means that I don't think these things anymore, or feel these feelings any less keenly, I do.
I genuinely think the situation actresses face is FUCKED.
I faced a big challenge: as I saw it, I could conform, or I could go my own way. I seem to face this decision in different guises and at different times of my life over and over again. I always make the same decision and I'm pretty pleased where it takes me.
What infuriates me and perplexes me and confuses me is this idea that thin=successful. WHY? Why don't more people stop to wonder why? This idea that if you're thin you are somehow more in control of your life than if you're not (and lets be clear, we're not talking about being obese, we're talking about being 'normal'..whatever that is.. They always talk about 'a healthy size 12', I guess that's what I mean). But anyway, to have a mother who wholeheartedly prescribes to this trollop doesn't help my own state of mind.
Being determined to be myself and enjoy any success on that basis alone is a bit weird. It makes life a constant battle. I lose my confidence frequently and am, more often than not, walking around with an empty cannister of self-esteem. I feel low, irritable, like everyone else it seems, I suffer from depression and anxiety, just to confuse what I'm really feeling. But sometimes, OH so rarely but definitely as I write this now, I get glimpses and shards of satisfaction because the consolation is that I feel successful, I AM a success in that I am carving my own path and taking on the monster of the world on my terms. I feel that subtle and graceful level of success even when the more obvious sort of successs isn't reflected in my dwindling career.
It's not simple and it's not particularly clever, but this conflict and anxiety about myself conveniently contained in this weight struggle forms the muscle of my uneventful little 26 years of life that I wrestle with every day.
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