The Music Video "Diet"

My first music video was filmed in Dartmouth in 2009, in the darkened Alderney Landing theatre, where I would later share the stage with my hero, Mike Kinsella - the venue beside the train tracks, so that a train might thunder past at any moment, bringing the theatre to a hush as the sound eclipsed all else. I was a guinea pig for a new production company that was looking to build up their demo reel. I borrowed a friend’s red prom dress for the glamour shots - it was the exact same cut as my actual prom dress, except red, and larger, to accommodate the weight I gained living on my own and binge-eating junk food with zero shame.

I’m grateful that 19-year-old me didn’t sweat about losing a couple pounds to be in a music video. I’m glad that that version of me wasn’t bothered by the need for such a thing. I had a history of struggling with disordered eating in high school, so it’s a bit miraculous that I had a couple years of not caring so much.

At the end of this month, I’ll be filming my eighth music video. This time around, 19-year-old me is decidedly not in the room - especially since “the room” in question is “the gym”. She has been replaced - and not by someone who engages in disordered eating, but by someone who long ago decided to respect the body that carries her through this life. I had a couple years of unhealthy dieting after moving to Windsor - I remember one summer when I would skip breakfast and then have only an orange and a black coffee for lunch, every day - and dropped down to my tiniest adult weight around the time that we filmed the “Sleep In The Wild” music video. A part of me is glad that we filmed that video when we did, because it perfectly preserved my youthful body, before pregnancy, before my late twenties when some switch was flipped and my hips decided they would never look 18 again.

But then, there is a part of me that feels that that video set an impossibly high standard in what my body should look like. For months before the shoot, I was hyper-vigilant about maintaining a low weight. I was always saying that there’s nothing like being naked on the internet to take away your appetite. (For the record, it was my idea to do the tub scenes, inspired by Amy Winehouse’s “You Know I’m No Good” video.) By the time I was married one year later, I had relaxed my restrictions and settled around a healthy adult weight that was 15 to 20 pounds heavier.

Since “Sleep In The Wild”, I’ve done only two music videos, neither of which have had any focus on my body. In “Pretty Words”, I only appeared from the shoulders up; in “What Do The Lonely Do”, I was shrouded in a winter parka. In 2017, I lost ten pounds just to gain it back when I got pregnant, but it was done in the name of being healthy so I could have a successful pregnancy.

In this upcoming “Hungry Love” video, we’ll be shooting in three venues, and in each, you’ll be seeing a good deal of me. Nothing like “Sleep In The Wild”, but enough that I’ve been working out every evening I can, thanks to a second-hand elliptical machine I scored on the Facebook marketplace last winter. I’ve been cutting back on snacks, trying to eat more mindfully, not eating late at night, and drinking herbal tea by the litre.

For a long time, I held this unfortunate belief that a heavier weight is alright for others, but not for me, because of my career in the music industry, which mercilessly objectifies women and commodifies our bodies as extensions of our brand or our commercial viability (ugh). Or maybe it’s not that I held this belief, but that it held me, because it seems very hard to be rid of it, and as a rule, it’s something that I would never want to see inflicted on anyone else, in any industry, which means it shouldn’t be applied to me, either. Your weight is not, and will never be, your worth.

These days, I’m very reluctant to label this thing I’m doing as “weight loss” or a “diet”. I feel that those kinds of words are extremely unhealthy when applied to my body, which is naturally small to begin with. And I want to be very careful of the way I talk about my body around our daughter. In my mind, I am framing this as necessary self-care and a healthy lifestyle, preventing disease, and generally, just sticking around. And I’m not hyper-vigilant these days - my slogan is “everything in moderation, including moderation.” If an upcoming music video happens to be my short-term goal for adopting a healthy lifestyle and committing to it, I think that’s a completely reasonable and positive thing. Even if, at the end of the day, I don’t lose a single pound, or look different in any way, I just feel better about myself, knowing that I’m taking care of my body, and that I’m physically able to do things like climb a ton of stairs loading into a venue, carry a bunch of gear, and chase after a toddler.

I’m very excited to be working with a new local videographer on this project. It’s been a long time since we’ve had a go-to video person, and I’m thinking we may have found “the one”! It looks like we might even have the video done sometime next month, so make sure you subscribe to my YouTube channel or find me on Facebook so you don’t miss it!