Why Gabourey Sidibe’s Blue Oscars Gown Was so Controversial
By: Esther Zuckerman
Tags: Hollywood, Fashion, Body Image, Oscars, Race

It’s like she wakes up and checks her calendar, and says, ‘Gee! The Golden Globes are this weekend. I wanna wear…YELLOW!’ And somehow a yellow dress shows up, and come that weekend, she’s on the carpet in a yellow dress thinking, Fuck yeah! YELLOW! while somewhere in the background I’m sweating with one heel in my hand, trying to find my seat, and hoping that my dress photographed well so that those bitches on Fashion Police don’t talk shit about me.

The first profiles written about Gabourey Sidibe were all pretty much centered around one thing: The twentysomething from Harlem was not actually the abused teenager she played in the movie that made her famous. A New York Times story from 2007 — two years before Precious, based on the novel Push by Sapphire, would hit theaters and garner Sidibe her Oscar nomination — flat-out said it: “Desk-job ambitions or not, Gabourey Sidibe is not Precious; she is a natural performer.” A Guardian piece took it even further, opening, “Just for the record, Gabby Sidibe is not a functionally illiterate high-school girl.” It seemed like no matter how often it was written, people refused to believe it.

Expressing a personal connection to a character can make for a better narrative — especially in the press-heavy lead-up to a film’s release. The audience always searches for authenticity, and Gabby’s Precious often felt too real. In that way, Gabby’s performance was revelatory mainly because it was a performance. Roger Ebert wrote of the film, “She so completely creates the Precious character that you rather wonder if she’s very much like her.” In the film, she wears the pain of her characters in her eyes and on her shoulders, and to some it appeared too visceral to not have been previously lived. But if you follow her on Twitter, you know that Gabby is one of the funniest people around. She isn’t Precious. But off screen, she didn’t easily fit inside the boxes of the Oscar-industrial complex.

On the festival circuit for Precious, Gabby wasn’t treated like other young starlets. She explains in her memoir, This Is Just My Face: Try Not to Stare, that she didn’t have money for a stylist, so she shopped for herself — buying prom dresses from plus-size boutique Torrid to wear at Sundance and Cannes. Even in the four months between those festivals — after the film had already won widespread acclaim and awards — no one told her that she’d need to wear fancy attire. “I was told that the dress code was ‘casual,’” she writes. “That was a lie.” She wore jeans under a paisley dress, while her co-stars Mariah Carey and Paula Patton were outfitted in full cocktail wear.

By the time awards season rolled around, Lionsgate would set Gabby up with a stylist named Linda Medvene. They weren’t a great match. Gabby didn’t feel comfortable telling Medvene whose style she actually wanted to imitate at the time — Kimberly Parker from Moesha — so she just told her, “I don’t need a dress that will stand out. I’ll do that anyway. I just want to look like I belong.” What followed was continued skepticism about just how Gabby, as a plus-size woman, would look on the Oscars’ red carpet, with headlines like “Gabourey Sidibe’s Dress Mystery: When Plus Size Is Too Big for Hollywood” and “Gabby’s Red Carpet Presence Sparks Plus-Size Debate.” Others were less explicit but no less uncomfortable. “What Will the Best-Actress Nominees Wear on Oscar Night?” asked Vanity Fair. “A woman with curves, Sidibe has been choosing empire-waist gowns, and this Marchesa dress fits the bill,” they surmised, putting a photo of the actress side-by-side with a runway look featuring off-the-shoulder ruffles. “The detail at the neckline extends over the tops of the arms, a problem area for some women, and bright white would really pop against her complexion.” Phrases like “problem area” and “complexion” dance around Gabby’s weight and race, but are no less insidious.