Home

Reviews

Columns

Sports

About vyuz.com

News

Candye Kane finds there's bias against big boobs

By David Moye

February 6, 2006

San Diego--Candye Kane has a sweet name, a sweet voice, and a sour taste in her mouth thanks to various newspapers around the country.

Kane is a blues and jazz singer based in San Diego, but has an international reputation thanks to her seven CDs, including her latest, White Trash Girl.

But it’s the reaction by various newspapers to the cover of her sixth album, Whole Lotta Love, that has Kane ticked. Local newspapers have refused to run paid ads featuring the Whole Lotta Love cover because editors felt it was “obscene and in bad taste.” Kane—who has 44 GG size breasts—says the photo isn’t any more revealing than a Macy’s lingerie ad and thinks the editors axed the ad because of size. “There’s no nipple showing,” she says.

Editors--presumably lactose intolerant--refused to publish this photo

The anti-fat censorship seems to have jumped up in recent weeks is spreading to the clubs that employ her. One club, Mazzotti’s in Arcata, a Northern California town near Eureka, refused to hang the album cover photo inside the club until they could block the breasts with a black bar. The overreaction shocks Kane, who says, rather than offending people, she usually has the opposite effect. The photo has proven quite popular and posters featuring it are frequently stolen by adoring fans.

Still, she says the poster debacle is proof fat people are still suffering the effects of “sizism.”

Kane hates how it’s no longer acceptable to make racist or gay jokes, yet fat jokes are okay. She admits that anorexics and skinny people are also victims of prejudice, but not nearly as much as their heavier counterparts.

But unlike some fat people who suffer in silence, Kane has used the “oppression” as musical inspiration, for songs like “Big Fat Mamas Are Back In Style,” “Fit, Fat And Fine,” and “All You Can Eat (And You Can Eat It All Night Long).”

Kane doesn’t know if the most recent bit of media prejudice will inspire any songs, but it has inspired a lot of support from fans—as well as some members of the media. For instance, after the Arcata club banned her picture, an entertainment newspaper in nearby Eureka offered to put it on the cover and let the fans decide.

The Candye Kane band will be performing in the San Diego area three times in February: the Belly Up Tavern on Feb. 11; the Calypso Restaurant in Encinitas on Feb. 12, and the Hillcrest Mardi Gras celebration on Feb. 28.

--------------------

What it's like to be straight in Hillcrest | By Leopard J. Ferry

San Diego Mayor talks corruption and the Strong Mayor form of government | By Larry Knowles

Steve York, UCSD pornographer, chooses law over porn | By Larry Knowles

The bare facts about Brazilian waxing | By Romina Cleary

A look inside Imperial Beach border patrol | By Larry Knowles