Princesses and ingenues: Plus-size actresses fight for turn in spotlight

As so many do, Stephanie Lexis found a home in theater growing up.

It was a place to belong, to fit in.

But as a plus-sized actor pursuing theater in college, she found she was running into dead ends.

"It's very disheartening when you actually want to pursue the artform and then you're totally being told that you're not enough because you don't appeal to a certain standard of beauty," the Woodbridge native said.

And she's decided to fight back against what she calls a long history of discrimination against marginalized bodies. 

"Around September of last year, I kind of just reached my breaking point when it came to being overlooked for leading lady roles, ingenue roles and princess roles in musical theater simply because I wasn't slim. And I had this 'aha' moment where I thought I'd use the Internet to my advantage and create online photo and video shoots of women my size who are in musical theater. Have us all dress up and sing as the roles we don't typically get to play because of our size. And I just thought it was a great way to showcase our talent, which is just really overlooked."

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And behind the multimedia project, she formed the Broadway Body Positivity Project, which advocates for body positive casting in musical theater.

"I realized there was a bigger cause at hand," she said. "The Broadway Body Positivity Project and the organization would be a space where we could advocate for actors of all sorts of marginalized bodies, whether it's plus size, physically disabled, actors who are little people and so forth."

And even though the organization focuses on marginalized bodies, Lexis says that it ultimately advocates for every actor to have body confidence.

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"Our other mission is to help actors who have been psychologically or physically compromised from being body shamed in this industry," she said. "I did this project where I had a bunch of actors submit anonymous stories about being body shamed by professors, voice teachers, choreographers, casting directors. A lot of those stories, there's this common theme of body dysmorphia, eating disorders, just poor self esteem. And I realized that actors are susceptible to having a poor perception of their body image. So what I am working on with the organization is trying to create resources for anyone who has suffered."

She recently launched an IndiGogo campaign with the goal of raising $16,000 for the photo and video shoot, which involved seven plus-size theater actors portraying leading ladies, ingenues and princesses from iconic musicals. The funds would cover compensating each of the participants for photography, hair and makeup, costumes and recording studio time, as well as advertising, licensing music and more.

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"While the industry's talent pool is more diverse and exciting than ever, casting standards are still quite antiquated: roles like romantic leads, ingenues, and princesses (aka characters who are desirable and worthy of love) are reserved for slim, statuesque women; whereas plus size women are limited to evil villains, stereotypical fat characters, and other characters with unlikeable/undesirable traits," she wrote in the campaign.

Taking part in the project are actors, singers and burlesque performers: LaVon Fisher-Wilson (Broadway's "Chicago," "The Color Purple," "Newsies," "Lysistrata Jones"); Arianna Armon, Lexis, Suzi Juul, Deidre Cochran, Brittney Brown and Coco Kasperowicz.

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Perks for donating to the campaign include dinner with a Broadway stars Alexandra Silber and Fisher-Wilson, social media shout-outs, online audition and burlesque coaching and more.

For more on the project or to donate, visit indiegogo.com/projects/broadway-bodies-plus-size-actresses-take-the-lead. To stay up-to-date on The Broadway Body Positivity Project, stay with Facebook.com/broadwaybopo, Instagram.com/broadwaybopo and Twitter.com/broadwaybopo.

Ilana Keller is an award-winning journalist and lifelong New Jersey resident who loves Broadway and really bad puns. She highlights arts advocacy and education, theater fundraisers and more through her column, "Sightlines." Her "about me" fact during icebreakers will always be that she rode a roller coaster with the original cast of "Hamilton." Reach out on Twitter: @ilanakeller; 732-643-4260; ikeller@gannettnj.com