“Fat is a feminist issue,” declared Susie Orbach in 1978; so when we ran into the psychotherapist and social critic at a party at Winfield House, we were eager to ask her what she thought about last week’s furore over Tara Erraught, the opera singer who critics savaged for her size rather than her performance.
“The fat-shaming of women and the general judging of women’s appearances are appalling,” said Orbach. “Normally it happens so gratuitously — so to see it happen in such a full-on attack really exposes how awful the norm is.”
Opera, she pointed out, is “all about artifice, about being caught up in the world and the story — not being limited to the narrow confines of 21st-century aesthetics. Literally narrower and narrower, with women expected to take up less and less space.”
Is Orbach a passionate operagoer? “No,” she confessed. “I wasn’t exposed to it young enough. But when my children were little I would sing out my frustrations in an operatic style.”
