How Thin Is Too Thin to Play Tracy Turnblad?

by Chris Peterson

There’s a local theatre just outside Atlanta getting ready to produce Hairspray, and one casting choice is already getting people talking.

It’s Tracy Turnblad.

I’m not going to post a photo of the actress here because I have absolutely no interest in turning this into a public examination of someone’s body. But I will say this: she is, by a considerable margin, the thinnest person I have ever seen cast as Tracy.

And judging by some of the conversations happening on social media around the production, I’m not the only person who noticed.

Which brings me to a question: How thin can Tracy Turnblad be?

Because Tracy’s body size, and the way the world responds to it, are woven directly into the story Hairspray is telling. She is mocked because of her size. She is dismissed because of it. Tracy walks into spaces where she is immediately judged for not looking like the girls people expect to see dancing on television.

And she refuses to apologize for any of it.

So when a theatre casts someone who very clearly does not fit that description, I think it’s fair to ask what exactly we’re doing here.

And before somebody makes this entirely about licensing, there is no rule from Music Theatre International saying Tracy Turnblad has to weigh a certain amount. There is no minimum dress size. There is no BMI chart tucked inside the production contract telling a director exactly how big Tracy has to be.

But MTI does require licensed productions to accurately reflect the character descriptions in the script. Its current materials make it pretty clear that Tracy is a bigger girl.

So there is some room for interpretation here. The question is how much.

Tracy is not a character who just happens to be plus-sized. Her confidence in a world that keeps telling her she should be embarrassed is one of the reasons people love her.

So when you cast a noticeably thin actress in the role, you don’t just change the look of the character. You change the meaning of scenes.

And that is where I think this conversation gets complicated.

Because if there is no number attached to “bigger,” who decides when a casting choice has crossed the line from interpretation into fundamentally changing the character?

This is usually where someone says, “Maybe she was simply the best actress who auditioned.”

And maybe she was.

I also want to be careful about putting any of this on the actress who got the role. I don’t know why she auditioned for Tracy or what went into her decision to accept the part. And frankly, none of us knows how another person sees their own body.

It is entirely possible that someone auditioning for Tracy feels deeply connected to her because of how they have been treated throughout their life. Maybe they were the bigger kid growing up. Maybe they were bullied about their body. You cannot look at a photograph of someone today and know that history.

I have no idea who else auditioned for this production. I don’t know whether there were ten potential Tracys or two. So I’m not going to pretend I do.

But “best actor for the role” has never meant that every other part of the role stops mattering.

Casting is not just about who sings the highest note or gets the biggest laugh in the audition room. Directors make decisions based on a hundred other things because all of those choices affect the story being told.

And sometimes physicality is part of that story.

If a production casts Tracy so thin that the audience has to mentally fill in the fact that she is supposed to be treated as a bigger girl, then I think something has been lost.

You can absolutely have an incredible actress standing on that stage. But that does not automatically mean she was the right actress for Tracy Turnblad.

So what’s the solution?

I don’t think MTI should put a weight requirement into the licensing agreement. I don’t want directors weighing teenage girls at auditions. I don’t want a rule saying Tracy has to be over a certain number of pounds or wear a certain dress size. That would be gross and completely unnecessary.

But I do think the guidance could be stronger.

Tracy should look like someone who could actually experience the treatment she receives in the show.

Because otherwise, we start approaching a pretty uncomfortable place where thin actresses get to portray the discrimination experienced by plus-sized women, while plus-sized actresses continue fighting for the already limited number of roles written specifically for them.

And that seems completely backwards.

There doesn’t need to be a scale in the audition room. There just needs to be an understanding of the story you’re casting.