Gradually, at the concerts, I began to hear calls for 'the fat girl'.... Then I would jump up for the piano stool, forgetting about my size [145 lbs at age 13], and work to get all the laughs I could get.
I started playing the piano when I was 6 years old 'cause my folks tried to get me away from the gramophone. And I just - I lived for music since I could think. And they got me piano lessons. So by the time I was 13, I was quite an accomplished piano player and musician.
You're already using your imagination because you're watching fiction and then you're trying to believe that this girl who weighs 100 lbs, soaking wet, could actually beat up a guy. Which works in a lot of situations but in a lot of situations you look at it and you're like, "Come on. Could you please get someone in there who actually has biceps and not just because they don't eat?"
I would love to see more acknowledgement of how challenging it is to feel positive about fatness when you can't find clothing. When there literally is not something made for your body. Nobody ever talks about that; all those fat girl clothes swaps and stuff are for a very specific kind of fat girl. If I was Lane Bryant fat, I would be joyful about fatness.
Your only guidepost is your own instinct and judicious editing. In my stand-up act I learned that in the first 10 minutes I could say anything and it would get a laugh. Then I'd better deliver. In the movie it's the same thing. You get a lot of laughs when people first sit down and then the story better kick in. Many years in front of an audience, I would hope, give me a sense of what works.
Reclaiming the word 'fat' was the most empowering step in my progress. I stopped using it for insult or degradation and instead replaced it with truth, because the truth is that I am fat, and that's ok. So now when someone calls me fat, I agree, whereas before I would get embarrassed and emotional.
Reclaiming the word fat was the most empowering step in my progress. I stopped using it for insult or degradation and instead replaced it with truth, because the truth is that I am fat, and that's ok. So now when someone calls me fat, I agree, whereas before I would get embarrassed and emotional.
First, I started to play the organ. I did that until I was 11. From the age of 11 to 13, I gave up music entirely. And then at 13, I picked up the guitar, and after one and a half years, I started practicing intensively. I began playing in rock bands, and it was there that I discovered that the music I liked to write was always instrumental.
To try to cure unemployment by inflation rather than by adjustment of specific wage-rates is like trying to adjust the piano to the stool rather than the stool to the piano.
I considered wrestling at a young age, but I never could relate to any of the Divas. I have always been a bigger girl, and I did not think that WWE would want a girl my size, so I never expressed my dream to wrestle.
Then it was snack time, right in the middle of mass. Right out of nowhere, the priest would look down and say, 'Let's have some yum yums!' You would get in line - you would jump in the line - and you would go up and get the crouton O'Christ.
I began to hear what I was being taught about God, by the priest and my parish, and my exterior teaching did not coincide, did not match up, with my interior reality. And as they were teaching me about that God I was thinking: Who are they talking about? This was not how I experienced God. I gradually began to move away from the God of organized religion.
I may get married later or may never get married. But I want babies, so I'll have to get married. I want fat, cute babies. Every girl has to think about it at some point. For me, marriage is about family, and that's why I find it necessary. Till then, it's normal to have a partner and do your own thing.
If I get big laughs, I'm a comedian. If I get little laughs, I'm a humorist. If I get no laughs, I'm a singer.
If you're a movie star, you get the girl, you lose the girl, and then you get her back. But if you're a character like me, you lose the girl, then you get another one, then you get another one, then you lose them all, then you lose your life.
I started studying music at the age of five and a half. My older sister was taking piano lessons. When her teacher left our apartment, I would get up on the piano bench and start picking out the notes that were part of my sister's lessons
I started studying music at the age of five and a half. My older sister was taking piano lessons. When her teacher left our apartment, I would get up on the piano bench and start picking out the notes that were part of my sister's lessons.