loveyourrebellion:

weareallfromearth:

fresafresca:

thisisthinprivilege:

strawberrywhorecake:

I always knew that Mama Cass died at a young age, but I never knew how. I didn’t even think about it until I was listening to her today. So I looked it up. 

“At the height of her solo career in 1974, Elliot performed two weeks of sold-out concerts at the London Palladium. She telephoned Michelle Phillips after the final concert on July 28, elated that she had received standing ovations each night. She then retired for the evening, and died in her sleep at age 32. Sources state her death was due to a heart attack…In fact Elliot had lost 80 pounds (36 kg) in the eight months before her death by fasting four days a week. Her fatal heart attack was most likely related to this extreme weight loss measure.”

 

Fanfuckingtastic. Congratulations, Society. You made this beautiful, talented woman feel like she had to go to unhealthy and extreme measures to fit your mold. 

:(

this is especially important to note here because for many years now, the “rumored” cause of her death has always been referred to as her choking on a sandwich. As we can see, the truth is far from that myth.

Oh no, oh no no no. And all the crap about the sandwich - I knew about the heart attack, but I didn’t know this. Oh no.

What’s so exquisitely sad about this is that Mama Cass’s death is always attributed to her weight not her weight loss. Think about this “ham sandwich myth:” it’s just another way to fat shame her out of our cultural consciousness.

i too heard of the sandwich story, but it seemed too awful to be true and i refused to be believe it. i love mama cass and her music. its totally shameful that she had to live in a world that could only see her for her weight. 

the thing i wanted to add to this thread was that when she first attempted to join the mamas and the papas, john phillips was unapologetically/disgustingly sizist and would not let her sing with the group. i had caught a doc on them some time ago, where he  admitted that he wouldn’t let her join the group bc she could not hit the octave range they needed (i call ultra bullshit on that, no one in the group could hold a candle to cass’s pipes), and that only after she was involved in an accident where a brick fell on her head was she able to hit the note, thus permitting her to join. classic sizist scum move; begrudgingly accepting a person of size only after sharing ‘humorous’/humiliating information in order to de-sexualize their bodies, making their existence more palatable for ‘normal folks’. fuck that, she is a goddess!