Alternate title: Mandy and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
For starters, I got no sleep last night. Didn't get back from Rocky til after 2, then got up at 7:30, and I have a cold so it took forever to fall asleep. The reason I got up at 7:30 was to meet up with Michael and carpool to Burnsville for Parkway Playhouse auditions.
Worst. Auditions. Ever.
Don't get me wrong - I felt like my actual audition was great. But the whole process was insanely disorganized, and frustrating to the point that I've decided even if I AM offered a role, I won't accept it. Nothing against Parkway Playhouse in general, because I know a lot of great people who work/have worked for them. And I've heard that in past years, auditions have not been the horrible process they were today. However, seeing as how today is the only experience I have with them...I was thoroughly unimpressed, and I intend to wait at least until next year to try to get involved out there.
Basically, what got me really angry was the complete and utter lack of order. We were numbered as we came in...and those numbers meant absolutely nothing. They didn't take people in order of arrival. At 3:00, there were people who had just been SITTING AROUND since 10:00 and hadn't even gotten to cold read. Meanwhile, there were people who didn't show up until 1:30 who were completely finished by 3:00. I got there at 10:00 and was done by 12:30...but Scott and about four other guys, who also got there at 10:00, was still waiting around. Finally, Scott decided he wasn't even interested in auditioning anymore after seeing the lack of courtesy and professionalism displayed by those running the auditions. I know it was frustrating for the directors, too; they didn't seem to have too much say in the order of things.
It's not that hard, people. Audition actors in the order they show up. If you want to do different groups of guys and girls, that's fine, but MAKE TWO SEPARATE LISTS so you don't have twenty girls finished and the first five guys still sitting around. Let people get their WHOLE audition over with in an orderly fashion instead of expecting them to wait five hours between steps. And if you absolutely have to have someone come back and read for a different part for you, get it done QUICKLY instead of asking them to wait another two hours to read a page of dialogue.
So, by the time we finally got back to Asheville (around 5), I was already just wishing I could start the whole day over and spend it hanging out with Scott instead of completely wasting our time in the middle of Burnsville. Of course, that wasn't the end of the day. When trying to leave for the Alice Underground show, I spent ten minutes looking for my phone. I finally found it, which was good. Then I immediately realized I could not find my license. Finally found it in my floorboard when I got to the theatre; it had fallen out when my purse dumped over at some point.
(After the show was the cast party, which was basically the only really good part of the day. It was a blast, but I wanna get all the bad stuff out of the way first.)
So, Scott took me back to my car after the cast party. I couldn't find my keys anywhere. Finally, I looked inside my car window...to see the keys in the ignition. The only other set is in my mother's purse. Scott brought me home and dropped me off...and then I realized that I should have just gotten him to bring me and get the other set of keys so I could go back and get the car instead of leaving it overnight. It's not exactly parked in the nicest neighborhood; someone I know had her purse stolen out of her car in the same parking lot, and now I'm worried about the possibility of someone breaking the window and taking the car.
And the time changed tonight, so after all that mess, I'm an hour behind on sleep, and I CAN'T sleep anyway because I'm stressed.
The icing on the cake? I came home to find my official rejection letter from Little Shop auditions; I already knew I wasn't cast, but it's such a nice little stab in the back after a long day to find a "Thanks, but no thanks" waiting for you.
The only thing that makes this day at all redeemable was watching (and rewatching) Carol Channing sing a song about jam in a wonderfully horribly campy 1980's TV version of Alice in Wonderland. I laughed til I cried and couldn't sit up straight.
Honestly, that almost makes the whole day worth it.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Slutty vs. Sloppy
The world is buried in snow yet again.
Today, after seeing pictures of a beautiful teenage girl in a beautiful dress, I had the thought, "Beauty is wasted on the young!". And then I started really analyzing WHY I had that particular thought. So now you, my few lucky readers, get to sit through my thought process.
My gut reaction for saying beauty is wasted on the young is two-fold. First of all, most girls don't realize just how beautiful they are in high school until about 5-10 years later. Suddenly, they look back at their old photos and think, "Holy crap, I was gorgeous! Why did I waste so much time moping about because I thought I was too fat/too thin/too short/too tall/too ugly?" Second of all...beautiful young girls don't know what to DO with their beauty. Don't get me wrong, I am in no way trying to insinuate that teenagers should dress up to show off all their assets in a provocative way...which, oddly enough, is the first idea that seems to spring to mind when someone mentions "showing off assets". I just think it's a shame that girls don't seem to know or have much interest in dressing for their body type. They inevitably dress in far too revealing clothes that don't actually flatter their figures, no matter what they might think...or they dress in baggy jeans and T-shirts that ALSO don't flatter them.
I'm trying to understand this phenomenon. To break it down in a really basic form...it seems that girls dress like sluts because they want attention, and girls dress in baggy clothes because they don't want attention. What's sad is, both types end up receiving negative attention. If girls were taught to dress in a manner appropriate for their age and body type...I'm no expert, but I imagine it would do wonders for teenage self-esteem.
I realized pretty quickly after I had my first thought (beauty is wasted on the young) that there's a deeper problem. And, while I know the media is an easy target to pin society's problems on...I really believe the media is at least partly at fault here. It's not the only factor by any means. Even without media, teenage body issues would still exist. But fashion is affected by the media...and subsequently, the way teenage girls dress is affected. The ones who end up looking like sluts dress that way because they see adult women in magazines doing so. The women they see are touted as being the sexiest women in the world, so of course girls are going to try to emulate that. Magazines don't tell them, "Oh, by the way, those clothes the model is wearing? Yeah, they look good on her body type, but a very, very small percentage of real people look good in those clothes."
Some girls take the opposite route. They know they can never look like women they see in the media, so they cover their bodies up completely. They make themselves look sloppy, they hide in oversized jeans and boys t-shirts. Their posture slumps because they feel too tall, or because they're ashamed of their figures. They make fun of the girls who dress like sluts, mainly because they think slutty or sloppy are the only two options they have.
Wouldn't it be great if we started teaching teenagers how to dress for their body types? Instead of just showing them pictures of models in magazines and saying, "Here, this is in style. Go swipe your dad's Visa so you can look like this!", wouldn't it be better to teach them that one of the best ways to look fashionable and look good is to dress in a way that flatters them? I think so many girls could benefit from this. It should be a required topic in health class...and it should include all body types. Fat girls, thin girls, short girls, tall girls. Girls with big boobs, girls with big hips, girls who have pencil-thin waists but flabby arms.
It's true that beauty comes from the inside, but sometimes it's hard to see that beauty when you're wearing clothes three times too small that wouldn't even look good if they had them in your real size.
Today, after seeing pictures of a beautiful teenage girl in a beautiful dress, I had the thought, "Beauty is wasted on the young!". And then I started really analyzing WHY I had that particular thought. So now you, my few lucky readers, get to sit through my thought process.
My gut reaction for saying beauty is wasted on the young is two-fold. First of all, most girls don't realize just how beautiful they are in high school until about 5-10 years later. Suddenly, they look back at their old photos and think, "Holy crap, I was gorgeous! Why did I waste so much time moping about because I thought I was too fat/too thin/too short/too tall/too ugly?" Second of all...beautiful young girls don't know what to DO with their beauty. Don't get me wrong, I am in no way trying to insinuate that teenagers should dress up to show off all their assets in a provocative way...which, oddly enough, is the first idea that seems to spring to mind when someone mentions "showing off assets". I just think it's a shame that girls don't seem to know or have much interest in dressing for their body type. They inevitably dress in far too revealing clothes that don't actually flatter their figures, no matter what they might think...or they dress in baggy jeans and T-shirts that ALSO don't flatter them.
I'm trying to understand this phenomenon. To break it down in a really basic form...it seems that girls dress like sluts because they want attention, and girls dress in baggy clothes because they don't want attention. What's sad is, both types end up receiving negative attention. If girls were taught to dress in a manner appropriate for their age and body type...I'm no expert, but I imagine it would do wonders for teenage self-esteem.
I realized pretty quickly after I had my first thought (beauty is wasted on the young) that there's a deeper problem. And, while I know the media is an easy target to pin society's problems on...I really believe the media is at least partly at fault here. It's not the only factor by any means. Even without media, teenage body issues would still exist. But fashion is affected by the media...and subsequently, the way teenage girls dress is affected. The ones who end up looking like sluts dress that way because they see adult women in magazines doing so. The women they see are touted as being the sexiest women in the world, so of course girls are going to try to emulate that. Magazines don't tell them, "Oh, by the way, those clothes the model is wearing? Yeah, they look good on her body type, but a very, very small percentage of real people look good in those clothes."
Some girls take the opposite route. They know they can never look like women they see in the media, so they cover their bodies up completely. They make themselves look sloppy, they hide in oversized jeans and boys t-shirts. Their posture slumps because they feel too tall, or because they're ashamed of their figures. They make fun of the girls who dress like sluts, mainly because they think slutty or sloppy are the only two options they have.
Wouldn't it be great if we started teaching teenagers how to dress for their body types? Instead of just showing them pictures of models in magazines and saying, "Here, this is in style. Go swipe your dad's Visa so you can look like this!", wouldn't it be better to teach them that one of the best ways to look fashionable and look good is to dress in a way that flatters them? I think so many girls could benefit from this. It should be a required topic in health class...and it should include all body types. Fat girls, thin girls, short girls, tall girls. Girls with big boobs, girls with big hips, girls who have pencil-thin waists but flabby arms.
It's true that beauty comes from the inside, but sometimes it's hard to see that beauty when you're wearing clothes three times too small that wouldn't even look good if they had them in your real size.
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