Via the f word, we find out that Amanda Palmer of Dresden Dolls fame has left her record label after they refused to promote her new single and video (above) because of her “fat” stomach. Seriously.
[Palmer] refused to let them remove shots of her “fat” belly from the video for Leeds United (see above), and is therefore “uncommercial”. 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.
Too ridiculous for words – but you’ve gotta love awesome fans taking action.
P.S. Community poster lefthandedpenguin beat us to this punch on this last week!
UPDATE/CORRECTION: Palmer has not left her label – they won’t let her. She gives the full story here.
84 Comments
Well if she was fat we’d be talking about how that doesn’t make her any less talented or deserving of promotion, but she’s not, so we’re talking about fucked up ideas of acceptable body types, what is and is not considered fat. Namely why the hell is amanda considered fat by anyone?!
I agree, but I think it does insofar that it’s easy to discredit the whole issue if it’s not reported about carefully. Personally, I think F-Word should’ve mentioned their source. I believe Amanda Palmer (she’s awesome) and that RR were dickheads, but I can’t find that she stated both that she’s looking for a new label and that it’s because of this issue, as F-Word wrote. But I might be wrong.
(I hope this comment will actually turn up where it’s meant to be – I’m still figuring this out, it appears!)
Bunny: YES!!!!!
OK, I love The Dresden Dolls in general and Amanda Palmer in particular. It surprises me that a label would be so dumb and looks-centered as to reject an artist of AP’s caliber based on her failure to fit into the standard mold of skinny female. She’s a healthy weight and I don’t think it’s bad to be happy with that. Even if the label had other reasons for dropping her, it’s still a terrible excuse and a terrible thing to say.
I think she is beautiful and her body is more on the thin side than not.
What confuses me is, even if the label is strictly concerned with their male (gaze) buying customers, it doesn’t make sense.
Haven’t they ever been to a strip club?
A belly like hers, not fat, not flat, not stretch marked by birth is considered sexy by most western, hetero males.
Her actual fans seem to think she is beautiful and probably aren’t as interested in her natural beauty/body type as much as her style.
Who do they think is their demographic?
I’m glad to see the response from her fans.
It makes more sense as a publicity stunt.
If she actually had a big belly, I might find it easier to believe.
then again, vocalists have gotten away with having a good enough voice that body didn’t matter-
or that their bodies changed what matters
as in the cases of
Aretha Franklin, Etta James, Ella Fitzgerald, Pink,
Beyonce (changed what is expected by being “thick”) J-Lo (making ass acceptable by “white” people too)
and so many others…
Where is this “fat” stomach they speak of?
All I see is the gorgeous Amanda Palmer!
Love Amanda. Stunning performer. As far as the record label, good riddance.
Is a line of conventionally beautiful women dancing and writhing not enough?! Now beautiful Amanda, in a classic and somewhat androgynous (sexyyyy) outfit, needs to have an itty-bitty figure or cover all up? Like I said, good riddance. Palmer will be snatched up by a better label before we know it.
I find it ironic that in a thread about unrealistic body standards and stereotyped beauty, you find it appropriate to call other artists on the RoadRunner label “ugly and talentless.”
Uh – Where is the fat belly they speak of? I saw none.
Keith Kahn-Harris did the first in-depth sociological study of the metal scene. He published it a few years ago as a book called Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge.
Unfortunately, gender issues, as well as issues of homophobia, were not given the time/space I would have liked to see. They mostly took a backseat to a discussion of racism within the scene (which is also important and just as interesting in its history). In my personal experience within the scene, people are more comfortable discussing issues of racism than issues of sexism. I think this is because the majority of metal fans are Caucasian heterosexual males. It’s easier to discuss an issue that affects an “other” than it is to discuss issues that directly relate to you and your interactions with other people of the same/opposite sex.
I’ve sometimes thought about writing about the tension that exists between feminism and metal. I personally feel very attached to both my feminist values and the ideas that have drawn me to metal, but it does sometimes result in some upsetting cognitive dissonance.
I’d be really interested in reading your thoughts on it. I’ve had some limited interaction with the metal scene, and there have always seemed to be very weird and complicated things going on there gender-wise. I was never ensconced in it enough to get a good handle on what was going on, though.
Sorry, but this report is incorrect – she did say “fuck you” but as someone who’s subscribed to her mailing list and blog, she hasn’t (even if I wish she had) broken with Roadrunner.
I got curious and did some snooping around — from here a couple weeks ago:
i really, really am not happy with the record label. i’m working to get off.
So, perhaps has not broken with Roadrunner yet.
The record label is right – Amanda Palmer does appear to have body fat, I guess that’s the new working definition for “fattie” in the industry.
The record label is right – Amanda Palmer does appear to have body fat, I guess that’s the new working definition for “fattie” in the industry.
Yeah, she has made comments to that effect, I hadn’t noticed that one though, I’m not on the forums – thanks for that.
I really do hope she gets on a different label, or starts to produce her own music a la Ani DiFranco and multitudes of other badass artists. This one seems to not get it at all, and not just for the “belly fat” issue.
She is not fat.. probably making an excuse to get rid of her because she did the whole Palin parody video thing, one way of censoring free speech and keeping women locked under that glass sealing? Damn oppressors
Oh my word. I remember being at an Amanda Palmer gig a couple of weeks ago and hearing her bring this up. The audience were all – obviously – on Amanda’s side on this one: the record company were being ridiculous.
Still, I do hear a lot of criticism of Amanda and her body from supposed fans. A common point of contention is the fact that she’s not completely shaved all over; i.e. during a gig you may catch sight of a few stray armpit hairs. Oh noes, your poor, innocent eyes!!! Clearly the problem is with her and her body, not you and your sexist, body-judging values! /sarcasm
I love Amanda Palmer and her songs talk about some pretty serious issues… Oasis for example has a really upbeat style but that doesn’t mean she is making fun of rape or abortion by any means. The lyrics go like this… judge for yourself…
when i got to the party
they gave me a forty
and i must’ve been thirsty
cause i drank it so quickly
when i got to the bedroom
there was somebody waiting
and it isn’t my fault
that the barbarian raped me
when i went to get tested
i brought along my best friend
melissa mahoney
who had once been molested
and she knew how to get there
she knew all the nurses
they were all really friendly
but the test came out positive
uh-oh
I’ve seen better days but i don’t care
I just sent a letter in the mail
when i got my abortion
i brought along my boyfriend
we got there an hour
before the appointment
and outside the building
there were all these annoying
fundamentalist christians
we tried to ignore them
oh-oh
i’ve had better days but i don’t care
oasis got my letter in the mail
when vacation was over
the word was all over
that i was a crack whore
melissa had told them
and so now were not talking
except we have tickets
to see blur in october
and i think were still going
oh-oh
i’ve seen better days but i don’t care
oh i just got a letter in the mail
oasis sent a photograph
its autographed and everything
melissa’s gonna wet herself
i swear
I think she should start her own label and call it “Rebellyon Records”
I mean, my read on it is that she’s posturing satirically as the image of irresponsible teen girls that the media (et al) propagates.
Hey all,
Don’t know if anyone bothered to oh, you know, fact check this, but as a music journalist I was intrigued when I saw it and contacted her label. Take the following with a grain of salt, but they told me that Amanda is still signed to the label, and they will be shooting three more videos for her album in order to release a DVD companion to the album. That sounds like promotion to me!
Bands can’t just leave their label when the label pisses them off — many of them have restrictive contracts and they’d have to buy their masters back in order to get out. It makes sense — labels spend a lot of money upfront to pay for recording, touring, and video costs, and they need to turn a profit somehow.
So yeah, Roadrunner and Amanda probably disagreed over the video, which is pretty much par for the course. But ask yourself — why would a label refuse to promote an album? They’d just be shooting themselves in the foot, because they’d lose money.
Not to harp on this blog, but it really, really bugs me when people just reprint shit without bothering to verify it. A few months back, Be Your Own Pet threw a huge fit about Universal “censoring” them because the label refused to release certain violent tracks. A lot of people just took the band at their word. When I talked to Universal, they told me that they declined to release the tracks, but also agreed to let the band out of their contract temporarily so they could find a new distributor — a fact the band conveniently forgot to mention.
To be fair, isn’t Cabaret, the musical revival! just a knock-off of Cabaret, the movie which is just a knock-off of the original stage musical which is just a knock-off of actual cabaret of the German Deutsch-Reich period? I didn’t know the writers of the original had the patent on turn of the century club entertainment, and thus, the only one would could draw inspiration therein.
(P.S. punk cabaret/gypsy has been a fast growing sub-genre for quite some time now. Many would credit the Dresden Dolls for it’s sudden popularity several years ago.)
Knowing her and a lot of her tragic history, my guess is that this is a comedic retelling of something that actually happened to her.
This whole debacle sort of reminds me of that scene in “School of Rock,” where Jack Black is telling the little girl she’s not too fat to sing.
“Ok, you’ve heard of Aretha Franklin right? She’s a big lady. But when she sings, she blows people’s minds! Everyone wants to party with Aretha!”
It’s horribly facetious, but I had to say it.
Not saying Amanda’s fat, though. Not by any stretch, oh no no no no no. She looks like…well, a normal person.
With pencil-thin eyebrows and an incredible contralto.
She doesn’t make light of rape and abortion. On the page for that song she has a link to Planned Parenthood and she sarcastically dedicated it to Sarah Palin.(According to her blog she voted for Obama FWIW).
I completely understand the teenage character in the song obsessing over her favorite band in light of her rape/abortion. It’s a coping/defense mechanism. When I was raped as a 14 year old I was unable to deal with it for the first three years, and all I did was obsess over MY favorite bands at the time. I couldn’t handle talking about what I’d been through yet. The lyrics of this song are very poignant for me.
Oh, and no, Amanda Palmer is not fat.
cort5680 – Exactly. I really think she assumed that she could get dropped from the label by creating a controversy and clogging up their servers. The whole “fat” thing is nonsense, esp since there are other things in the video that MTV would redlight in .0002 seconds.
Note: When you are dropped, you do not have to pay back the tons of $ that you did not recoup.
Yes! The one who gets in the fight with another dancer toward the end, right? I thought the exact same thing watching it!
“a few weeks later i had a meeting with the owner of the label. he said he thought it was a shame that someone as smart and talented as me could not make a commercial record that they could sell. and he thinks that someday i’ll see the light and write some better songs.
i told him i made exactly the record i wanted to make.”
Words cannot describe how infuriated I am by this disgusting label. If they think Amanda’s belly is even remotely fat, GO LOOK AT MINE…
Where’s my damn camera? u_u’
Someone may have already said this — okay, probably — but can we all take a second to acknowledge the extraordinary beauty and artistry of both song and video? This is ART.
Her body is beautiful. Healthy bodies are beautiful
@Vagina Warrior
Um that song is a satire on Sarah Palin’s views on rape… duh!
shsally, I agree.
But I think there’s something important about acknowledging how ridiculous our ideas of what thin and fat looks like have become.
Even if Amanda Palmer was fat, the label would be incredibly out of line for telling her to change it.
But the fact that she isn’t even fat adds a whole new fucked up level to it because it shows how unattainable beauty standards have gotten.
If fat it ugly, and Amanda Palmer is considered fat, then where does that leave most of us? It’s insane to think about.
No.
And she isn’t.
My sarcasm; Wow, her midsection looks almost identical to mine (and almost every other average jane) in skintone, size and shape. I guess I must be worth less as an artist and woman. What a releif that I found out this way and not in some embarrassing sexual or beach-related incident.
Dresden Dolls are fab and Amanda Palmer is sexy as hell.