Camryn Manheim.

• Author: Douglas, Susan
• Position: Actress discusses society image of being overweight and being political - Interview

In the spring of 1997, a new television drama by David E. Kelley, The Practice, began airing on ABC. Critics immediately praised the show for its gritty realism, superb scripts posing tough moral dilemmas, and the high quality of the ensemble acting. But for women in particular, one actor stood out: Camryn Manheim. Manheim played Ellenor Fruit, a rough yet vulnerable attorney with a mouth on her and about twelve hoops and studs climbing up her earlobes. Manheim's skill at moving between those poles women navigate so frequently--strength and certainty on the one end, insecurity and doubt on the other made her riveting to watch.

But there was something else crucially important about Manheim. Somehow, she had managed to get through Hollywood's size police who dictate that only women who weigh 100 pounds or less get to have roles in film and television. Women around the country, so weary of the tyranny of the media's anorexic ideal, connected powerfully to Ellenor, the character, and Manheim, the actor.

What people didn't know was how many times, in her struggle to land good roles, Manheim was told she would never get work if she didn't lose weight. When she won an Emmy in 1998 for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series against extremely stiff competition, she jubilantly held the statue aloft and proclaimed, "This is for all the fat girls!"

A year later, she published her autobiography, Wake Up, I'm Fat (Broadway Books, 2000), which the women of America turned into a bestseller. In it, Manheim attacked our culture's still-widespread prejudices against fat people, and urged women to stop torturing themselves to become hyper-thin and, instead, to accept their bodies and get on with their lives. Mode magazine featured her as its fashion cover girl. She became, instantly, a leading voice for large women in America.

Manheim's outspokenness about the narrow, corporate-produced ideals of thinness and beauty derives from her progressive, activist background. Her grandparents were union organizers. Her mother, Sylvia, worked as a receptionist for the Communist Party. And her father, Jerry, was blacklisted in the 1950s from any defense-related industries because someone reported to the McCarthy crowd that he owned a copy of Political Economy, by Wassily Leontief. Since then, they have participated in a range of left-liberal causes. Her brother Karl, an attorney, was deeply involved in the civil-rights and anti-war movements. Manheim herself has been especially active in promoting the rights of the disabled, particularly the deaf, and in condemning homophobia and the ongoing threats to civil liberties. She also recently became a single mother. On March 6, she gave birth to a son, Milo Jacob.

I spoke with Manheim by phone in July, and it was like plugging in to a power source. Her passion for women's rights and social justice is galvanizing, and she is a firm believer in the power of the people. For example, Manheim insists that if we women are fed up with the sexist, retrograde images designed to corrode our self-esteem (and thus to encourage us to buy products that will allegedly restore that self-esteem), then we should just, collectively, say no to these images. She urges people to recognize the power they have if they act in concert, and feels that if people are unhappy with media imagery, or intolerance, or inequitable power relations, they should stop complaining and start resisting.

Q: Your book struck a chord with millions of women. What kinds of reactions have you gotten to it?

Camryn Manheim: The predominant reaction was one of enormous...