Considering the number of resident spectacles, topless shows and convention gigs that require showgirls galore, you’d think casting directors would be receptive to the female form in all its wonderful variety. You’d think that. However, a former Jubilee! dancer and current freelance showgirl had a quite a different experience when auditioning for a producer whose taste in pulchritude is strange but quite typical, I am told, of the attitude pervading the Las Vegas Strip nowadays. (I’ve heard of women being perversely turned down for Crazy Girls, famous for its array of derrieres, on the grounds that they had too much ‘junk in the trunk.’) To wit:
… in case any other performers are going through this.
In the past four years I have become a much stronger and more dynamic dancer. …
Some of it has been thanks to experience and the rest I owe to a lifestyle change. Since high school I struggled with never feeling thin enough and therefore resorted to a nasty eating disorder that owned my life for about six years. During this time I got a great deal of praise within the dance world for being so thin and so it turned into an addiction. I had some pretty awful health warnings during this time such as, the lack of my period, hair loss, swollen ankles, and a damaged liver. Now that I am finally happy and healthy, I recently got called in and then turned down for a job because their girls are, “exceptionally thin right now.” I exercise daily and eat very healthily. I for the first time feel sexy and look like a woman instead of a little boy. Don’t people want to see a woman on the stage? It used to be that some curves were what every woman was striving for. Why did that change?
It changed with the rise of Cosmopolitan Magazine. Their models were freaks of nature. The funny thing is Cosmo’s version of what men think is sexy. Ironically if you look at Playboy their models are far from from skinny. I find it amusing that years ago bartenders complained younger women were taking the good jobs. Now 28-30-year-old women are complaining the younger girls are all that they hire.
The super-skinny “boy” look has never appealed to me or any guys I know … Who decided that this was a good look in the first place? Still puzzled by this … I hope all you girls out there know that we really do love your personality first and foremost; body type is secondary!