Hmmmm.......... maybe men are from Mars and women from Venus but sometimes they do say some interesting things??!!

As I’m working on a pantomime with primarily men – there’s only me and another girl in the show – and we’re all sharing one dressing room -   you do have some very interesting conversations and find out all sorts of diverse, random and rather strange things and opinions. We also have a cross section of gay and straight men in the cast so it is a very varied opinion.

Yesterday afternoon, as I whipped out my Cosmopolitan magazine in between shows, all the guys rolled their eyes and groaned!! I chirped up ‘What on earth? You can’t go wrong with Cosmo, it teaches a girl everything she needs to know!’  Their response was somewhat surprising, instead of them flipping through to find a ‘hot’ girl they just said ‘yeh, it teaches you a wrong image of what you’re supposed to look like!’
Following this we had a group discussion on women....  about how models are all airbrushed and quoted by one guy ‘look like aliens  – they might as well computer animate models into adverts as it looks nothing like them in real life’.

They went on to discuss how magazines give out a false image to young girls and women, making us believe that the way models and celebrities look in photographs is the way we should look.

Funny, as I’m hoping to book a photo shoot in the New Year to get myself some new photographs to promote myself in the performance industry, I have been turning down pages in magazines of poses and styles I like that I may copy.... maybe that’s not such a good idea now?! I mean I can have myself airbrushed but will I be recognised if I was to walk into an audition??

Another ‘dressing room’ conversation we had was discussing me dying my hair, I get easily bored with my hair, my make-up, my style and I’m constantly changing my look  and coming up with new ways to re-invent myself! I quite fancy for Christmas and Winter time dying it a rich brown but have quite a reddish tint to it. I think it would be very daring and different – a lot of my friends think it will be great and that I should go for it! But chatting to the boys they told me that I could lose employment because I will not look like my headshot and my CV will be wrong! But surely I can change these to match my current image? They said that casting directors and choreographers etc will expect me to look exactly like my headshot and I’ll get a ‘no’ as soon as I walk in the room because I’m not like my headshot! So does that mean I have to always look like my headshot?? That I can never change anything about myself? I’m not allowed to experiment and create different looks..... isn’t this industry mainly about the way that you look? Lots of questions that I need to ask and I need to find out the answers. What do any of you think!? We were constantly told at college to change our image and develop a unique look. It was always the girls who had that type of magazine “look” that were chosen for things not because they were the best dancer or singer or actress but because of the way they looked. Certainly our commercial jazz tutor said in the commercial dance world it is always about look and image.

Celebrities are always changing their style, their hair and getting tattoos, piercings and no one seems to question them or is that because they have a celebrity status and it no longer matters? Personally I don’t want to be dictated to by a headshot and make myself look like that every time I go out for an audition but I don’t want to lose out at an audition either because I have different coloured hair to my headshot or do I have different headshots for different looks which would be expensive . When I go to auditions I have noticed that most people don’t look like their headshot anyway and some still manage to go through to the next round and get the job! So what is the answer to this question? Has anyone got any opinions on the matter?  I thought with the art of make up in the industry today you can reinvent yourself overnight anyway – you can be blonde today, brunette tomorrow and a red head by Friday.

I’m sat right now with one of my new housemates watching Live from Studio Five and they’re going around the streets of London asking women what they think to Cheryl Cole and Danni Minogue’s dress sense over the course of the X-Factor! They’re comparing their dresses throughout the shows – does it really matter? I mean they’re both very, very wealthy and can afford to buy beautiful dresses from top designers and have the best make-up artists and stylists work on them and airbrush any “blips” .... normal people can’t!

So the conclusion according to the guys in my dressing room is ......

·         Men like girls who look real! But what is “real”?

·         Men like girls who have ‘a bit of meat on them’/’something to grab’

·         Models are aliens and don’t look human

·         Girls never look like their photographs – in the flesh they look different!

I thought it was an interesting debate really and surprising to find out their opinions. It is a pressurised industry for girls especially as we are expected to be “glamorous” and there is a lot of pressure put upon us to be a certain size and have a certain look.