I’m working on the next installment of my dissertation saga, but here’s a little mid-week lagniappe. 'My Mama, Cass,' by the singer’s daughter Owen-Elliot Kugell is moving slowly towards me on my library’s hold list. While I wait, I had to re-visit my discussion of her fashion in my book Sex and Unisex. It was part of a much longer discussion of the sizing and style changes behind the 1960s “Youthquake”.
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The mid-1960s trend towards greater body consciousness helped create a culture that redefined “fat”, by changing how clothes fit, and further marginalized young fat women by sizing them out of trendy labels. Singer Cass Elliot, who loved fashion but didn’t fit designers’ vision of the new body, stood out as an example of how to negotiate an image that was right on trend – and fabulous.
The Mamas and the Papas’ first big hit, “California Dreamin’” was released in December 1965 and dominated the charts for the first three months of 1966. They represented not just a new sound – folk rock – but also a new look for groups. Instead of carefully coordinated costumes, they each wore what they liked. The look of the group seemed to symbolize a new free way of living, each person absolutely idiosyncratic. From the beginning, the star of the group was Cass Elliot, who was big in every way – big personality, big voice and a big body. At just over 5 feet tall, the former Ellen Cohen from Baltimore was reported to weigh over 200 pounds. People who wrote about her found it impossible to ignore her size, which they mentioned directly, or metaphorically, as when Newsweek described her as "that volcano of sound". As Time’s reviewer pointed out, former model Michelle Phillips' willowy frame was a dramatic contrast to "Big Bertha"' Cass. (Of course, no one ever gave the weight of the two Papas.)
Stories of her life reveal a woman who loved glamorous, feminine clothing. In high school, Cass refused to dress according to the rules and was well known for her eccentric dress: Bermuda shorts paired with high heels and white gloves. A pre-Mamas and Papas boyfriend recalls that she always dressed impeccably and in a very feminine style, favoring big hats, pretty scarves and flouncy dresses. When “Mama” Michelle Phillips opened the door to her New York flat and first laid eyes on Cass Elliot, she was also just starting to feel the effects of her very first hit of LSD. Seeing Cass in a pink angora sweater, great big false eyelashes and hair in a bouncy flip, Phillips recalled. "I remember thinking, 'This is quite a drug'".
Despite her public self-confidence, Cass was privately uncomfortable with her weight, which varied from 180 (after a particularly intense bout of dieting and diet pills) to over 300 pounds over the course of her career. Still, she dressed herself enthusiastically and found plenty of styles she adored in the flowing lines and visual effusion of the Mod and hippie eras. Relying on personal dressmakers, she created a blend of current styles – miniskirts, caftans, custom-made boots – and old Hollywood sparkle. She and Michelle had many of their stage looks created at the same Hollywood boutique, Profile du Monde, which specialized in made-to-order clothing from sari silks.
In her solo career, Cass embraced the Hollywood glamour she loved. The performances began with Cass, in a beaded gown, being lifted onto the stage by an elevator. According to reviewers of her final appearances in 1974 in London, she looked "glittering, stunning and magnificent", “like a pink sunrise”.
If she had lived, she would have joined the pantheon of super-sized, glamorous female singers: Kate Smith, Aretha Franklin and others. But instead she died at 32. Her death was first attributed to choking on a ham sandwich, but then discovered to have been a heart attack, which the headline writers swiftly translated into “obesity”. But in her heyday with the Mamas and Papas, she got the lion’s share of the fan mail, and was often surrounded after their concerts by young girls asking her advice. In an era where “do your own thing” was a mantra for young, Cass Elliot showed that could mean for the Rest of Us. Like her contemporary, Barbra Streisand, she was not conventionally pretty. But as Esquire noted in 1969,
“What Streisand did for Jewish girls in Brooklyn, Cass Elliot was doing for fat girls everywhere. The diet food people must have hated her the way nose surgeons are said to hate Streisand. While the Mamas and Papas were defining a lifestyle for their fans to emulate, Cass was redefining the concept of beauty among the young.”
Cass Elliot epitomized the female archetype of “earth mother”, a label often applied to her ("Cass looked like the mother of all mankind", “Earth Mother in a muumuu”) that combines size and procreative power. Her solo debut album, “Don’t Call Me Mama Anymore” was an attempt to shed both the “Mama Cass” moniker and the maternal image, but she was fighting an uphill battle when it came to the fashion industry. There is a long-standing relationship between weight and “motherliness” in women’s clothing; plus-size powerhouse Lane Bryant began with maternity clothes before expanding into “mature styles”, which also happened to run larger than the Misses range. Determined not to be left out of the Youthquake, Lane Bryant put on a fashion show in 1968 featuring above-the-knee skirts for “stout women”. The New York Times described the models as “fuller”, “chubby”, and “plump” but also as “motherly” and “grandmotherly”. A young full-figured woman, frustrated by the matronly looks in the ready-to-wear marketplace, could look to celebrities like “Mama Cass” Elliot for inspiration.
Love this piece, Jo.