Lady Gaga, in the Tacoma Dome, with the Discriminatory Event Staff.

Lady Gaga, in the Tacoma Dome, with the Discriminatory Event Staff.
Saturday, August 21, 2010

We’ve all heard by now what an amazing performer Lady Gaga is. I stand here today to tell you that she has earned every bit of that reputation; everyone else in the world was not lying. I’ve been to a lot of shows, and it’s rare to see such audacious, extravagant, unrestrained fervor on stage. It’s evident in every movement she makes, every silly-brilliant thing she says, every blow-your-mind-out performance she gives that she puts her heart, soul, mind, body, lungs, brain and several other organs out there for her audience, and that she loves what she does or there’s no way she could do it.

This is not, however, a review of another Lady Gaga show. This is the very true story about one of my dearest friends and how she had a shitty night being discriminated against by the event staff at the Tacoma Dome on Saturday, August 21, 2010.

Victoria has been a wonderful friend of mine for over twenty years. Our children call each other cousins. We’ve been up one side and down the other, fighting and making up and fighting again. After all this time, I will do whatever I have to do to take up for her right now, because I was so fucking offended by the way she was treated on Saturday that part of me wants to boycott the T.Dome altogether even though I know it’s not the fault of the facility for hiring bad employees.

Victoria is a woman of size. Call her voluptuous, call her heavy, call her a big girl. Call her a fat chick. Call her what you want. When I use the word “fat” to describe someone or something, I do my best not to use it as an insult but rather an adjective. Just as calling something “gay” when you mean “stupid,” calling someone “fat” when you’re angry at them and for no other reason is cruel and unnecessary. But whatev. Victoria’s fat, and she’s hotter than most thin chicks I know. So, there, bitches.

So, on Saturday we only left two hours before the show started and only found our seats less than two minutes before the show started. The last thing I saw before the lights went down was my good friend’s dejected face from 15 seats away, standing in the isle in between the bleachers saying “I can’t get there.” She turned and walked back down the stairs.

As soon as I had a chance (I was with other people, one of whom is a child who I could not conscionably leave alone in her seat until another adult came), I found Victoria standing at the railing by the entrance to our section. “Glitter and Grease” was, what, Gaga’s second song of the night and people were already coming up to Victoria and telling her she had to go to her seat. Ten minutes into what should have been a phenomenal show and Victoria and I are both pissed.

We stood at the railing for as long as we could before another individual came along telling us we had to move along. This was the first guy I spoke to, and he was nice. I said “my friend can’t get to her seat and I’m not leaving her here by herself.” I pointed to Victoria and he said we could stand there so long as we tried not to block the isle. So, we tried to have some fun and rocked the fuck out, because Gaga is worth the price of admission.

Yeah. Every five minutes or so someone came along with a flashlight telling us we had to move. I don’t know if the word “buzzkill” has made it into the dictionary yet, but these torch-wielding assholes on power trips are the absolute definition. They were rude, giving my friend and I both dirty looks (which we had no problem returning, btw), telling us to move to the right, to the left, behind the line. Here, there. The fat chick gets a body check for being fat. The thin chick gets a body check for being dressed like a transvestite from the meat-packing district on Sex and the City.

In short, I say FUCK YOU!!

As Lady Gaga speaks to her audience about not discriminating against gay youth, I stood powerless as my fat friend was discriminated against for not being thin enough to get to our seats. Sure, if we’d arrived sooner perhaps we could have swapped seats with someone in our row and been on the isle, but that’s not how things panned out. In any case, she did not deserve to get the looks she got from the staff, to get the attitude she got from the staff. As a paying customer, I was absolutely furious to see one of my best friends being treated the way she was being treated. Had she had a broken leg, everyone would have said “poor her.” Had she been in a wheelchair, had MS, anything. When I was a kid I got picked on for being short and skinny. She got picked on for being fat. Now, here we stand, on a night when we’re supposed to be celebrating our birthdays together and having a good time and people are telling me I look great and treating her badly because she can’t go to her seat.

FUCK YOU!! FUCK YOU!! FUCK YOU!!

I fucking bought Victoria a ticket to see Lady Gaga with me so we could throw down and have some fun, and the only thing fun about the show was Lady Gaga, and that makes me so angry. I don’t have money to waste on having a shitty time at the expense of people who don’t understand the needs of people of size.

I went to sit with my family members for a bit, but I could not help but feel guilty when I lost sight of Victoria and went to stand with her again. She told me that they’d called staff member after staff member after staff member to tell her to take her seat. After a while she just started asking over and over and over again to send a supervisor she could talk to. As I joined her, and she was telling me this, a cross-looking woman with a flashlight approached me and demanded that I take my seat.

I said no. My friend was unable to take her seat, and I wasn’t leaving her to stand alone all damn night. Besides, we’d already been told we could stand as long as we refrained from blocking the isle, which was stained with more beer than I could have paid for with my last four paychecks. Were we really the biggest hazard present?? She called over a tall man to demand that I take my seat. I said no. My friend was unable to take her seat and I wasn’t leaving her to stand alone all damn night.

He didn’t seem happy. Guess what?? NEITHER THE FUCK WERE WE!!

They made everyone stand behind “the line”, where we could barely see the show. I started dancing on the line. Flashlight Chick, shortly thereafter dubbed the Sphincter Police (from Pretty Woman, get it??) grabbed my arm and told me to get back behind the line. I did my best “stomp the runway” Tyra Banks walk away from her, slapping fishnet-clad rear and screaming “KISS MY FAT ASS, BITCH!!” at the top of my lungs. I don’t know who heard it over Gaga, but I guess V said to the woman standing next to her with a smile on her face “that’s my friend.”

So, that was our Lady Gaga night. We danced, we sang, we shook our asses . . . when we weren’t being told to move or being given dirty looks or having a staff member roll their eyes and send over another staff member.

Hey, look. I understand that the employees in places like this make zero money and have to deal with assholes every night. Their job sucks. But when they do things like treat their customers badly because they’re unable to be in their designated space, they suck too. Especially when they’re unnecessarily mean about it. People laugh at fat people for being fat. I’m writing this to say that that is fucking cruel and hateful and needs to change with the same quickness that being cruel and hateful to gay people does. Fat people don’t need pity. Fat people don’t need diets. Fat people certainly don’t need people treating them badly because they’re not thin enough. As a “skinny bitch,” a label I was not comfortable with growing up, I got teased and picked on because of my lack of size. I will most likely never know what it’s like to live in a plus-size body, but I know what it feels like to be picked on because of my size, and I think it’s a bunch of bullshit. Standing back and watching my friend, who I think the world of, being picked on because of her weight, even as an adult, pissed me off more than you can even think about. I’m livid just writing this down. Whether you consider obesity to be a disability or not, if you’ve never experienced it then you shouldn’t make fun of it, or talk down to fat people or make them feel badly about themselves. I don’t care how cliché it is to say this, but until you’ve walked a mile in someone else’s fat-ass shoes, then FUCK OFF!!

Discrimination is discrimination is discrimination, and it sucks out loud.

What would Mother Monster say??