The Rebellyon
If you have never heard the Dresden Dolls, check out “Coin Operated Boy” as soon as possible. If you have heard of them, you may have also heard that singer Amanda Palmer was recently told by her record label that her “fat belly” makes her “uncommercial.” The F-Word UK says:
This comes from a metal label where, I have it on good authority, “you can count the number of women on the fingers of one hand and most of the people on the label are decidedly chunky hairy dudes”. Amanda’s fans are quite rightly outraged by this shoddy, sexist behaviour and have begun a Rebellyon, posting pictures of their own bellies on fan forum Shadowbox and sending them to Roadrunner in protest.
I first heard about The Rebellyon when my husband (who is going to see Amanda Palmer and her sexy belly in concert tomorrow night, as it happens) forwarded me the link. From Rebellyon:
This issue is not just about Amanda Palmer’s belly. This issue is about all the bellies of the world: big, small, hairy, stretch-marked, scarred, pregnant; every single belly. The aim is to reclaim the belly, to promote a healthy body image for everyone (not just females) and to protest against the “barbie dolling” of artists by record companies and the media…
We promote healthy body images! Love your bellies! All shapes, sizes and colours! What was once only a protest has grown in to a movement to promote healthy body image. The Rebellyon is devoted to getting people comfortable with their bodies.
Whenever I hear about a new hot music star (most recent examples: Leona Lewis and Taylor Swift) they inevitably turn out to be very thin and very sterotypically beautiful. The only fat or even chubby chicks who seem to end up having music careers are the few who have enough talent to somehow make it onto American Idol. And yet they are few and far between.
This whole phenomenon completely baffles and irritates me. We get 100 Jessica Simpsons for one Beth Ditto; regardless of those singers’ relative merits, the disparity there between conventionally and unconventionally attractive music stars is disturbing. Music is supposed to be about who can sing, not adhere to the ridiculously flawed beauty ideal; but somehow, I feel like these days, if you’re a woman, you have to be Maxim-magazine-bramded “hot” to be successful. Please, tell me I’m wrong.
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Advocacy, American Idol, Beth Ditto, Celebrities, Feminism, International, Music, Video
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For musicians the ability to sing is far less important than being marketable. A marketable singer with average talent will generally out perform (commercially) someone much more talented but who is less marketable. Sadly fat people are not very marketable.
For the record, I am absolutely head over heels in love with amanda palmer based solely on her single “leeds united”. I had no idea “coin operated boy’ was the dresden dolls, but I love that song as well. your husband has my jealousy.
Hi MO! You posted on my blog and sadly, believe it or not, I could not find you! (I’m not very computer-lit tho) – Thanks to Pasta Queen’s blog today, I finally found you, so I posteth! I think we have crossed paths before (3 fat chicks possibly?), where I once made friends with an awesome community of people, but due to too many commitments, I guess I backed off a bit. Your blogs, the posts in each of them are v. interesting – I’ll keep checking back, since I can’t figure out RSS and the like. I was once in the music biz – a folky-rock duo at just under 200 pounds. I was able to perform at a certain local level with some fans, but never hit mainstream, even tho I thought we sounded pretty good. Fat was/(and I guess) is not very well-tolerated in that very image oriented biz. Sad. So… good for the Rebellyon! Great to find you! Miche
I don’t know why looks trump talent for women in the music industry (or in any other entertainment medium), but that seems to be the case. I’ve noticed it most in country music, and that’s one of the reasons I quit listening to it. Most of the women are mediocre at best, and the mediocre ones all sound the same to me (and they’re ALL thin). Hell, even the ones who do have talent and are pretty good sound the same to me (I miss the days of turning on the radio and being able to say that’s Dolly or Reba or Patsy or Kitty, all women with distinctive voices). And where I live, forget about finding a radio station that plays anything new in rock or grunge or punk or whatever. If it’s not classic rock or old country or new country, you aren’t going to get to listen to it in my neck of the woods (unless you have cable or satellite and can listen to the music channels on that).
But yeah, a woman can have all the talent in the world and if she doesn’t meet that insane “beauty” ideal, forget it, you aren’t ever going to see her or hear her because, according to the business powers that be, she’s not “marketable”. The consuming public, according to them, only wants eye candy, they don’t want talent that can move them to tears by a performance, they only want someone who looks good. Who cares if she can sing, as long as she fulfills some fantasy?
This isn’t limited to women, I don’t think. Video killed the radio star, and all that. It’s ridiculous. Rock on with the Rebellyon!
Ahhh I LOVE that gallery of beautiful bellies in all shapes and sizes. That just totally brightened my day. Think I’ll have to join the rebellyon when I get home and submit a pic of my large-and-stretch-marked-from-two-ginormous-babies belly.
Mr. Twistie has been in the music biz for years and years…and years.
Back in the days when he was trying to get a label deal, he kept being told that he was too fat, too old (yes, he heard that well before he was thirty), too not the current look…and that’s what a GUY went through.
One of the labels that told him he was too old, too fat, and too funny-looking to be signed went on to sign a guy who just happened to be sitting in a club listening to a band one night. They didn’t ask if he could sing, if he could play anything, no, that wasn’t important. What was important? He had a ‘great goatee.’
Maybe if Mr. Twistie shaved off his mutton chops and grew a goatee….
Oh how I wish I could tell you you’re wrong, but all the evidence in the world says otherwise. That’s why I like supporting independent artists — they have more freedom when it comes to size and look and sound. Pop just gets more homogenized every year.
I couldn’t agree with Never teh Bride more…
Growing up I wanted to be a singer, but I realized pretty early on that mainstream commercial success was out of the question. It doesn’t stop me from writing, playing and recording my songs though :) Even if hardly anyone hears them lol
As far as gender equality in looks goes… I definitely think it depends heavily on the genre of music. If you’re a man and your style is pop rock or country, you probably won’t get far… but if you’re playing punk or metal, your looks can be overlooked, as long as you have the right “look” in fashion choices. I think for women, the genre doesn’t make much difference. Especially in the case of Metal, where usually a woman is kind of a “token hot chick” gimmick, in a genre where there aren’t many females.
This is another reason why I’m so in love with Adele.
(Ooooh, I LOVE Adele!!!)
In grad school, my gorgeous classmate was told that she’d be too old when she graduated to make it in L.A. (she was the ripe old age of 27 at graduation, and is stunningly gorgeous as well as crazy talented).
When I moved to L.A., I weighed 139 pounds, and I’m 5’9″. I was told that I was a “big girl.”
When Kirstie Alley was on “Veronica’s Closet,” the producers told her the show was failing because her ass was too big. ‘Cause, y’know, it had NOTHING to do with the crappy writing, directing, and producing!
And then there was that woman, whose name I have blocked out, who is an “anti-obesity activist” (read: fat-phobic bee-yotch) who said that Jordan Sparks should not have won “American idol” because she was too fat to be a good role model.
But it’s OK to be a drunken, drug-addled, anorexic no-talent ’cause, hey, at least you’re skinny!
Amanda Palmer is one of the best singers of the generation. She’s also a brillient musicion, song writer, and proformer. I have all her albums with the Dresden Dolls and listen to them a lot.
‘Manda, you don’t need them fancy record deals. Stay inderpendent, your to good for them.
It’s the pornification of culture, to steal a phrase from Twisty Faster at iblamethepatriarchy.com.
What really galls me is the hypocrisy of the audience. They get a porn-tastic pop singer and when something happens and she’s caught lip-synching to their own voice, they have an attack of apoplexy.
Yeah, right. If singing talent was really a primary consideration, we wouldn’t have websites bent on doing nothing but dissecting the bodies and rating the fuckability of the female singers.
Okay, if she’s fat then it really has come to pass. That being Anorexic is what is considered looking healthy these days.
I really loved the guy who played coin-operated boy in the video. Then again, I find Goth guys incredibly sexy in general.
Thanks for posting this. I’m a female metal singer with an ED, and I can tell you, the standards for men and women in metal are widely different. Women are not only expected to sing well (as they SHOULD, damn it), but it’s okay if they don’t, because they also must be sexy. And by sexy, I mean slutty. I can’t tell you how many times my guitarist has told me to dress sexier, look more like a ho, ect. Imagine having to face those standards while having body dysmorphia. In my eyes, I’ll always be unattractive, but I have to get on stage in minimal clothing anyway to appease our fans.
When can it be about the metal, again?
Have you considered the next time he tells you to be sexier, telling him if he says it one more time you’ll take his guitar, and hit him over the head with it?
Utube link broken. But their website has lots of videos.
http://www.dresdendolls.com/video/index.htm