"Nobody else knew what to do with me because big women are old"
About this Quote
The sting in Camryn Manheim's line is how casually it reports an industry verdict: if you are a "big woman", you're automatically filed under "old", and once you're "old" in Hollywood terms, you're functionally surplus. The phrasing is blunt, almost childlike, which makes it land harder. She's not dressing it up as theory; she's describing an administrative reality, the casting-equivalent of being mis-shelved and then forgotten.
The quote’s specific intent isn’t self-pity so much as exposure. "Nobody else knew what to do with me" frames exclusion as a failure of imagination on the gatekeepers' side, not a deficiency in her. It highlights how entertainment categories aren't neutral descriptors; they're job pathways. "Ingenue", "best friend", "love interest", "matriarch" are economic roles, and body size can act like a bureaucratic stamp that reroutes a woman away from desirability and toward invisibility.
The subtext is that fatphobia and ageism are fused in the popular gaze. Bigness gets read as a kind of premature expiration date, denying the possibility of youth, sexuality, or narrative centrality. Manheim, who broke through in the late 1990s with The Practice and became a visible advocate for size acceptance, is pointing at the trap: even when you have talent, the system would rather distort you into a type than build a story around you.
It works because it's personal without being private: one sentence that captures a whole cultural sorting algorithm.
The quote’s specific intent isn’t self-pity so much as exposure. "Nobody else knew what to do with me" frames exclusion as a failure of imagination on the gatekeepers' side, not a deficiency in her. It highlights how entertainment categories aren't neutral descriptors; they're job pathways. "Ingenue", "best friend", "love interest", "matriarch" are economic roles, and body size can act like a bureaucratic stamp that reroutes a woman away from desirability and toward invisibility.
The subtext is that fatphobia and ageism are fused in the popular gaze. Bigness gets read as a kind of premature expiration date, denying the possibility of youth, sexuality, or narrative centrality. Manheim, who broke through in the late 1990s with The Practice and became a visible advocate for size acceptance, is pointing at the trap: even when you have talent, the system would rather distort you into a type than build a story around you.
It works because it's personal without being private: one sentence that captures a whole cultural sorting algorithm.
Quote Details
| Topic | Aging |
|---|
More Quotes by Camryn
Add to List
