This Time I'll Spare You The "Not-So-Fat-Lady Sings" Joke
We wrote about Deborah Voight all the way back in 2006. You might remember her as the opera singer who was fired for being too fat, and who had gastric bypass surgery. She was recently rehired to sing the same role that she was fired for, back in the day. The New York Times has an overview:
At the time, the director, Christof Loy, proclaimed her too heavy to wear a sleek black cocktail dress that he deemed integral to his concept. The dress has since become a symbol of skewed priorities among opera directors who value a singer’s appearance over vocal artistry.
Voight made a video called “Return of the Little Black Dress” where she spoofs the incident… and makes reference to her previous weight with jokes like the dress saying: “I thought our being together was… a bit of a stretch” and then apologizing and saying “I was wrong. Size doesn’t matter.” Of course even the NYT points out, if size doesn’t matter, why was she fired at size 30 and then rehired at size 14?
This all seems very “all’s well that end’s well!” and “getting skinny is the best revenge.” But of course she should never have been fired in the first place, and I guess in her place I’d be a little more angry, a little less willing to take the blame upon myself for being treated unfairly. And yet…
Still, for Ms. Voigt there have been upsides to this humiliating episode in her life. For one, she looks and feels terrific. After her surgery, by monitoring her diet and exercise closely, this 5-foot-6 soprano reduced her dress size from 30 (at her heaviest) to 14, with resulting benefits to her confidence and health. In recent seasons she has been winning acclaim for portraying characters meant to look alluring, like Puccini’s Tosca and, in a career milestone, Strauss’s Salome, at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 2006.
And while she hopes that the little-black-dress incident will not be the defining moment of her career, she said, “It’s allowing me the chance to talk about the subject of obesity, especially childhood obesity. It’s become so much more prevalent in society today, it really frightens me,” she added. “I had a weight problem, and will have one for the rest of my life. It’s a constant battle. Gastric bypass is not a cure, it’s a tool.”
So what do you think of the video and the article? Are you as ambivalent about it as I am?
Thanks to Eleanor for the link!
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Art, Celebrities, International, Music, Theater, Video, WLS
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She’s what, not quite 2 years out from her WLS? I’ll believe that this was best for her when she’s 10 or 15 years out from it and has no problems with malnutrition or any of the other side effects of WLS. I feel sorry that she had to cave to the omnipresent pressure to be thin in order to be thought worthy of having an operatic career, since all WLS is still experimental. I don’t know what her eating habits/exercising were pre-WLS, but could her health have been improved by tweaking what she ate and getting a moderate amount of exercise? Would she have felt better then? Doesn’t really matter, does it, since that probably wouldn’t have led to her getting thin, and thin is just the be-all and end-all goal for women, isn’t it? That’s the measure of whether or not we deserve a career, nice clothes, a spouse/SO, and a loving family. It’s times like these that I really, really hate a society that thinks it has the right to tell people how they should look.
I’m with you vesta44- where are all the people who had weight loss surgery in the earlier years of it? Back in 1991, I had a friend whose mom and aunt both had weight loss surgery. They should be in their early 60’s now, but they are both dead.
That whole “at least you did something about the weight and were healthy” means nothing if the patient dies 20 some odd years below life expectancy.
This line made me particularly sad:
Recently she took a vacation in the Dominican Republic and came back six pounds heavier. “I got on the scale, said, ‘O.K., enough of that.’ ” She was down at her gym at 7 the next morning.
Because you know how this is going to turn out.
If it’s all about health, why aren’t we reading her cholesterol and blood sugar numbers, instead of her dress size?
I don’t like it. I mean, people have to do what they have to do, and if the only way for her to be able to do what she loves and is trained for is to lose weight – well, I’m not going to condemn her for it. But I think her being in that situation is something to mourn, not something to celebrate.
And getting thin isn’t the best revenge. Getting thin, especially by such a dangerous method, is letting them win. The best revenge would have been to get a better part with a different opera house and get rave reviews and bring in lots of money and make the first place regret hiring her. But I guess things don’t always work that way in real life =(
Make the first place regret firing her I mean.
Good point, Whyme. It’s not about health and it never was. It’s all about the appearance of good health.
Personally, I thought her video spoof was clever and done in good taste, considering the mentalities of those she mocked. I find myself rather liking her sass…
But I am also kind of turned off by the last statement she made, about WLS being a tool and not a cure. I understand WLS is very difficult and carries great risk, and I understand she made this comment because so many people think it to be just an “easy way out.” Still, if you still struggle with weight after having most of your digestive tract rerouted and amputated so that you no longer digest the bulk of nutrients from the foods you eat… then, perhaps your body is trying to tell you something.
It scares me that even people who have already realized that formerly fat is not the same as naturally thin are still promoting weight loss. I mean, how does that make any sense? It’s basically like saying, “You’ll have to struggle with this and half-starve yourself for the rest of your life, it will be absolutely awful but I suggest that you do it anyway!”
“Personally, I thought her video spoof was clever and done in good taste, considering the mentalities of those she mocked. I find myself rather liking her sass…”
Ditto. She seems like a spunky chick, mocking those who said she couldn’t take on a LBD role.
I do feel bad she felt the need to take such a drastic step as surgery. I think about the pressures on normal people to lose weight, to conform, and how it must magnify a hundred times for those in the spotlight, and I can sort of understand. It makes me sad.
squee! Thanks for following my tip!
I love that Deborah Voigt seems to be resisting the “Weight-loss Success Story” narrative that the media want to enforce. I love her diva attitude in the video.
But I had the same reaction as DivaJean and Vesta44- What might happen in the years after WLS? Opera singing is physically demanding, even if you’re not jet-setting the way a big star like Voigt. There used to be an idea that singers had to be robust to support their voices. That may be outdated- there are some great thinner singers- but I wonder how long a singer could keep going on a restricted diet?
I love the video. I’m not to keen on her “childhood obesity” views.
Speaking of childhood obesity, anyone see this week’s Time Magazine?
The cover headline it “Our Super-Sized Kids”
Why? Because it’s a Special Health Issue! So let’s talk about teh fattyz! And show a kid eating ice cream! zomg!
http://www.time.com/time/magazine
and by “it” I mean “is”
not to spam, but i forgot to mention the subhead mentions a “cure” for the “obesity epidemic”
gag-er-oo!
She is sassy, for sure.
My mother went to school with Debbie Voight at Cal State Fullerton in the 1980s. Mom and Debbie were good friends, and she was a frequent visitor to our house. She’s always had that spunky sense of humor and that magnificent voice.
She and my mom both struggled with weight all their lives, and I remember them both hating their bodies. Personally, I always thought they were both beautiful. I’m very sorry to hear that Debbie had WLS and that she had to do this to get her job back. That just enrages me.
I love Debbie Voigt, she’s super sassy and wicked talented. I thought the video was a stitch and a nice little coda to the whole unfortunate incident. I’ve been following her for many years, and I’ll say that her voice is still lovely, but just not the same post-surgery. The opera world, sadly, is getting more and more sizist, and clearly she’d been struggling and yo-yoing dramatically for years. While I don’t think the surgery was a good idea, I hope that it can be a catylist for her to keep doing everything ELSE that will help her maintain a long and healthy life and career.
“The best revenge would have been to get a better part with a different opera house and get rave reviews and bring in lots of money and make the first place regret firing her. But I guess things don’t always work that way in real life.”
Practically speaking, even a singer at Voigt’s level can’t get away with boycotting Covent Garden because of a previous snub – she would be perceived as unprofessional, unfair though that is, and that would in turn make it more difficult for her with casting directors around the world.
It’s telling that she had to get Covent Garden’s buy-in just to run the YouTube video.
Remember she also had an incident recently (at the Met, I think?) where she had to leave the stage in the middle of a performance and was too sick to go on. Someone had to step in for her in the middle of the performance.
Now of course, she really might have had some kind of real bug. People with WLS get bugs too, and that might be all this was.
But one has to wonder if perhaps she had a sudden GI-nasty attack during a performance, or starting “dumping” or having other WLS-related problems.
I’ve heard the stories of the vomiting and diarrhea and dumping and all, and wondered all along how that would work with a stage career. Esp in the years to come as she starts to develop more malnutrition issues.
Perhaps this truly was only a bug but I have to wonder how this will affect her career in the long-term. It’s been a boost in the short-term, but will it be such a boost in a few years when the malnutrition starts taking a toll?
So sad to see the formerly size-friendly field of opera go the way of the rest of the world. And so sad to see this sassy, spunky woman bow down to this kind of sizist crap.
I am a professional opera singer, too, and when this incident happened, it enraged me. I wrote an article about it for Classical Singer Magazine called “It Ain’t Over ’til the Black Dress Sings”, protesting the fact that Deborah Voigt, the premiere interpreter of Ariadne singing today, was somehow unsuitable because the director didn’t like how she would look in the freaking COSTUME; as well as the effect this sort of thinking has on the opera world.
Several years later, I have chosen to lose weight myself. I’m interested to see how this might affect my own career. (At least one general director told my agent he didn’t WANT me to lose weight, but that’s just because he envisioned a fat person in the role he was considering me for).
I think it’s sad that the world can’t accept people of all sizes and shapes as beautiful, sexy, and worthy of love.
Here is a woman who was very talented, then discriminated against, and then had major surgery to get her job back. Part of me is angry at her for caving, and feels vaguely betrayed. Another feels that she was coerced- I mean her livelihood was threatened, which is hardly fair. Another sympathies. But she was an opera singer. She sang beautifully, why isn’t the article about how wrong that was.
This whole situation is very sad, to me. Voigt hacked up her internal organs so that misogynistic/size-obsessed opera directors could be placated. Why misogynistic? While men do deal with criticism in the opera world while fat, they don’t deal with half as much ridiculousness as women do. At least, such has been my experience and the experience of those around me. Of course Voigt’s voice would be affected! My voice would be affected if all of a sudden more was riding on my BMI than my larynx! I hope that Voigt finds happiness and a good career, no matter what. I wish her the greatest happiness and the greatest success: fat, thin, or anywhere in between. Her voice is a gem in this world and she doesn’t deserve such critiques!!!