I Got This (3 page)

W
alter was always incredibly passionate about ways to move my career in a forward motion. He had the highest expectations for me and would stop at nothing to help me get to the top. One thing I know he wasn’t expecting was that I would ever go back to work at Burger King, something I could do only because it was, as they say, “under new management.”

This time, I worked the drive-through window. You didn’t hear, “Welcome to Burger King, may I take your order” when you drove up to my window. Oh, no. You heard my big ol’ mouth singing whatever came to mind. That window had a microphone and I couldn’t resist. I have never met a microphone I didn’t like—even
if it was at a Burger King. I especially loved singing songs from commercials like “…Always, Coca-Cola…” and even jingles from competitors like McDonald’s. That drive-through was my stage and I made sure to entertain our customers as they came by to pick up their Whoppers and fries.

It turned out the new manager of that Burger King was a club promoter on the weekends at a local nightclub called Mr. G’s Supperclub & Entertainment Center. Mr. G’s was a big deal in Chicago back then. My Burger King manager asked me if I wanted to come down to the club and sing a set or two. He said he could only pay me a hundred and fifty dollars.

Say what?

That was a lot more money than I was making working the drive-through or singing at weddings.

I was all over his offer like white on rice.

At the time, I loved listening to Whitney Houston and Destiny’s Child, so I figured I could sing a few of their songs and just do my thing. Much to my surprise, the club turned into a regular gig. And just like that, I was done working at Burger King, much to Walter’s satisfaction. I made up my mind then and there to make a living by carving out my career using my talents and doing the one thing I love. Working at Burger King was the first and last nine-to-five job I’ve ever had. I was nineteen years old and have never looked back.

I took general courses while attending college, and naturally,
music was one of them. My teacher there was a gentleman named Rufus Hill. On the first day of class, he made each of the students get up and sing for him. I felt like it was grade school all over again! When it was my turn, I sang “His Eye Is on the Sparrow,” which was a traditional gospel song I knew I could handle. By the time I finished singing, Mr. Hill was practically on the phone to his friend, a well-known theater coach. He called to have her come hear me sing.

The following week, she came to our classroom so I could sing for her. At the time, I had no idea why, but if someone asked me to perform, I was always happy to oblige. Turns out that she was looking for people to audition for the musical
Big River.
It was being staged at Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire, about an hour and a half outside of Chicago. I was going to try out.

Mr. Hill and his friend spent the next several weeks helping me prepare for my audition. They worked with me and helped me learn the music and lines. I practiced “How Blest We Are,” the most important song from
Big River,
until I knew it cold. I got the part and finally had my first real
professional
singing job.

From that point forward, Walter and I knew we’d ultimately take this journey together. I have always called Walter my life partner because we have been through everything together from the start. He knows me better than I know myself, and he’s always believed in me. I personally think every girl ought to have herself at least one gay man in her life because he will always tell you if
your shoes are so last season, your outfit is not working for you, your hair is a total wreck, or to get rid of that man you are dating if he isn’t treating you right! I always tell people that if they don’t like Walter, there isn’t something wrong with him—there’s something wrong with them!

B
y the time I was in my teens I was aware that I had become a plus-size girl. C’mon, I wasn’t blind. I may never have called myself “fat” but I still knew that I couldn’t shop where other girls shopped. I just felt confident that I could work with the body God gave me. I wasn’t insecure—I had all the great curves that a lot of women have to pay for!

When I was fourteen years old, I was in a group called Final Notice. The other two girls were a little older than me and comparatively speaking, they were petite. I was younger and, well, not as delicate. I wasn’t overweight, and because of my five-foot-nine frame, I was able to carry a few extra pounds—and carry them well. Even though I didn’t fit the look they were going for, they kept me around because I had the most talent. Image was always
the bigger issue with the girls in that group. The other girls didn’t want what I wanted—which was to sing. They wanted to wear skimpy little outfits so they would look hot. I wanted to choose costumes we could all wear to
entertain.

The girls from Final Notice and I would go to pick our outfits together, and this was often a frustrating experience. We’d go shopping and I’d try on matching jeans that were supposed to be in my size. While they always fit the other girls perfectly, mine were never quite right. Since I am so tall, I’d usually end up with jeans that were tight in the waist and far too short. If I went up a size, they were baggy all over and made me look even bigger than I was.

Many studies claim that approximately 60 percent of the population is considered overweight. If half of the population is women, then roughly ninety-three million are female shoppers in the double-digit size range. That is a lot of women. Those women are the average, not the exception. I’ve been one of those women, and I’ve had many times in my life when I felt like I was not going to find the right things to wear. That’s why I got the idea of opening up a clothing store of my own and calling it Average Sizes, because the average woman in America wears a size 14. If the average American woman is a size 14, wouldn’t it stand to reason that a size 14 would be the most common size sold? It’s not. It seems like sizes 12 and 14 are in fashion hell because manufacturers can’t figure out how to make clothes that really appeal to women who are that
size. I always hated that most stores carried clothes in small, medium, and large or sizes 0 to 14. If you didn’t fit into those sizes there was a separation that suddenly made you “plus” size and forced you into shopping at places like Fashion Bug and Lane Bryant. I had nothing against these stores. In fact, I was grateful for their existence. I just didn’t want to feel different for having to shop there. There was a store near us called 5-7-9, and my sister, Julia, and I used to joke that if you combined those sizes,
that
was a size that would fit us!

There are more options now than there used to be, but there is still some stigma attached to shopping in the plus department or at plus-size stores. And don’t get me started on some of the things that designers think plus-size women want to wear. It seems as if they think that the bigger you are, the more sparkles or prints you want on your body. I’m sorry, but why would that be true? Why can’t plus-size women just have a nice pair of jeans that fit well, and a great black top that hugs in all the right ways? (This is my note to designers out there—do right by the average woman!)

Julia once came to a Final Notice show and overheard people talking in the audience, saying, “She can sing but her clothes are too small!” Now, Julia has always been a big girl herself, so she didn’t understand why these girls in the audience were commenting on the size of
my
outfits. I was only wearing what the group put me in. The bigger dilemma for me was that I had to conform to their image or I’d be out of the group. We were definitely at a crossroads. Even though I couldn’t fit into the clothes they wore most of the time, I was still expected to do all the work in pants that were too tight, too short, and, truthfully, really uncomfortable. The other girls had the look but couldn’t sing. This didn’t make a lot of sense to me. I moved on.

The next group I was in was called Fate’s Cousins, a group I was in with two of my cousins. We picked the name as our way of paying homage to our favorite group at the time, Destiny’s Child. Ironically, I was the
smallest
girl in that group. We didn’t last very long, but after my experiences with Final Notice, I made sure Fate’s Cousins were about one thing and one thing only.
Singing.

There were plenty of times I auditioned for other groups and didn’t get the job because I didn’t fit the image. I didn’t see this at the time. Then I was just confused, and hurt. I honestly thought that my talent was the thing that should, or should not secure jobs for me. I didn’t fully grasp how important image was in show business. One such experience really sticks out in my memory—when I auditioned to be a backup singer for Barry Manilow. I was nineteen years old and probably at my peak weight of around 236 pounds.

I had never been on an audition where I would have to sing
and
dance. I’ll dance if I have to and sometimes when I perform, but I don’t necessarily think of myself as a dancer. Still, I’m a professional, and I’ll do what is required when it is called for.

The audition went amazingly.

I performed a gospel song called “Silver and Gold.” All of the casting people there, including Barry Manilow himself, absolutely loved what they heard. They were crazy excited when I finished. Where I come from, people will throw things at you when they think you did a great job. And when I finished singing that day, everyone in the room was throwing things my way. They picked up whatever they had nearby and tossed it at me so I would know they thought it was great. People in the hallway still waiting to audition were saying they didn’t want to follow me. “What’s the point?” I heard one girl say.

Oh yeah. I killed it.

I waited in the hallway for someone to come tell me a start date.

“I’m so sorry, Jennifer. We don’t have anything for you.”

You read that right.

That’s exactly what they said.

“Are you kidding me?” I asked.

You could have knocked me over with a feather. Turns out, I didn’t have the look so I didn’t get the part. I was extremely disappointed. I was dismayed. I thought I had nailed it and the job was mine. It took me years to realize that I didn’t get the job because of my size. At the time, I was just upset that I wasn’t going to get a chance to share my talents with a larger audience.

The thing I got from these experiences was that not everyone has the same values and focus. My focus has always been on talent over looks. This theme of people putting an emphasis on looks first has been a constant reminder throughout my life that most people don’t see things in the same way that I do. Looking back, I realize that it has always been my appearance that I have been judged on first. It made a difference whether I was fat or skinny. This is something I never totally accepted but was learning that I had to deal with.

Coming off of the Barry Manilow disappointment, I was given a challenge. At the time, I was signed to a record deal with a Chicago-based independent label called Righteous Records, headed by a man named David Johnson. He created a contest for me to be inspired to lose the weight, pitting me against another girl on the label who was much smaller than I was. David said we both needed to lose weight and whoever lost the most would win money. I am
the type of person who doesn’t like being told what she can and cannot do. And if you challenge me, I will accept. And don’t expect to win, because I will crush you.

Let me say that I’ve always been a real girl. If I can’t do something naturally, I won’t do it at all. Period. So I knew that if I wanted to win this contest, I’d be doing it the old-fashioned way—by working for it.

So I started exercising every day. I’d get up in the morning and do my DVD workouts, first with Billy Blanks’s Tae Bo and then aerobics with Denise Austin. Next, I’d go jogging around my neighborhood. I heard that people used to look out their window and ask, “Who’s that girl running around out there?” It didn’t take long for everyone to figure out it was just me. Next I’d then run up and down some local stairs for fifteen minutes and then jog back home. When I wasn’t working out around my house, I’d head to the gym.

I started watching what I ate for the first time in my life. I stopped eating fried foods, red meat, pizza, carbonated sodas, and ice cream (all foods I would avoid, as a rule until I started Weight Watchers). I went on a total meat-tox, cheese-tox, and sugar-tox. I ate grilled chicken, brown rice, and broccoli—straight-up diet foods. All the time. And nothing else. I did this same exercise routine for the first half of my day—every day—until I lost sixty pounds and got down to a size 10.

To me, being a size 10 was perfect. I thought, surely I could be-come a star looking like this. Who would have ever believed that size 10 is still considered plus size in Hollywood? Really, I just didn’t get it.

Shortly after this first weight loss, Walter came to me and said, “The world needs to hear you, Jen, and I’m going to make sure they do!” God bless Walter because he would go around finding anything I could sing for or be a part of. Walter found out that Disney was holding auditions for cruise-ship singers at a theater school on the northwest side of Chicago. I hadn’t sung for anyone in a while. I had been so focused on losing weight and getting myself in shape. To be honest, I wasn’t very excited about the audition but I reluctantly agreed to go. Really, I didn’t love the idea of taking a job on a cruise ship and traveling so far from home.