Big Dreamers...

On the subject of ‘Big Dreamers’, I don’t get much chance to read full novels anymore, so when I was given the assignment to review Dream a Little Dream of Me (Chicago Review Press, 2005), I was thankful I had several plane trips last month where I could bury myself in the book.  Dream a Little Dream of Me, by Eddi Fiegel is the definitive biography of Cass Elliott, alias Mama Cass, born Ellen Cohen, who was the pivotal character of the legendary 60’s pop group The Mamas and the Papas. 

Once I began reading this all-encompassing tome, I realized I was in for not only an historical perspective of the musical era which Cass emerged from, but a empathetic look at my own size-dictated journey through the entertainment field in the 70’s and 80’s where I was constantly told as an actress to reduce my child bearing hips, and lose thirty pounds even though I had given a great audition.  Cass never even tried to conform.  She carved her place in her own way, and never once apologized.  It’s almost as though she knew she never would fit in, anyway.  So she needed to plumb her own niche.

With Cass and her career path, no matter how nonconformist or how diversity embracing the hippie loving 60’s appeared, the body prejudice in 'onstage performing' is and has always been all-pervasive. Images aside, she made it work even though she confronted both equal parts ridicule and adulation in her upward climb to the top.  It never occurred to me while watching her as a child, with her fabulous voice and her Peter Max type Muu Muu’s, she would become a future plus-size icon worthy of an entire expose of her life, loves and longings.

Written by Eddi Fiegel, who deserves a thousand kudos for the amount of research woven into the tapestry tale with each sentence jam packed with facts about this famous woman, which kept me truly engrossed and wanting to know more.  From her Broadway show tune and theatre beginnings, Cass loved to sing but never had “the look” that made her that marketable during a time when thin ingénues were the preferred image.  It seems she was the girl everyone sought to have as a friend but no one wanted to be romantically involved with as a lover. 

Cass defied conventional expectations of what a woman of her size could or couldn’t do.  During the era of Jefferson Airplane’s gorgeous Grace Slick and the unconventional aura of Janis Joplin, Cass was amongst those women in rock who were cutting edge and redefining and challenging the standard body type preordained by some written role of acceptability for a rock star. 

She was truly a product of her times, defining that era as well as participating in it.  She did have a fondness for overindulgence of food and drink and living life in the rock star fast lane.  Pregnant out of wedlock, married yet never divorced for years, devastatingly in love with musician Denny Doherty who shunned her advances yet worked side by side with her for over a decade.  In an “Almost Famous” flashback type scenario, Cass was truly the odd woman who was somehow at the center of it all. 

The book proved a reassurance, if nothing else, to dispel the cruel rumor that Cass did not die choking on a sandwich, as if gluttony had consumed her. Dead at the age of only 32, she simply died of an excessive hard life and judging from the emotional despair she must have felt never having truly gotten the man she always wanted, she could literally have died of a broken heart.  To quote John Sebastian of the Lovin’ Spoonful once again, “We were all in love with Cass at one time or another.  We were under her spell.”

Let’s continue to interact and connect further the curvy market and rekindle the belief that we are curvy women who are brimming with vitality and potential.  Expose yourself to your deepest desires. After that, wanting has no power, and fear vanishes.