![]() She might have been confident but being a mould-breaker makes you very vulnerable. Looking through contemporary eyes, it is easy to forget the culture Cass lived in. In 1968, after seven months of fasting four days a week, Cass had shed 110lbs but ended up in hospital. She was persuaded to change her mind but no one stopped her trying dangerous diets. "She said she'd never go on stage because Michelle was beautiful and she wasn't," says John Phillips, one of the Papas. Nancy Roberts, founder member of the Spare Tyre Theatre Company, a group inspired by Susie Orbach's Fat is a Feminist Issue, explains: "She was this wonderful sexy role model and inspiration who made it less of an incriminating burden to be fat."īut though outwardly confident, Cass felt the pressure to be slim. At 22, performing with the folk group Big 3, when her dress would no longer zip up the back, she said: "Sew two sheets together and let me get out there!" As Richard Campbell, who compiles the official Mama Cass website, says: "It's one thing to be an earth mama letting it all hang out in 1967, quite another to have those attitudes in 1963 before it was really hip."Ĭass's impact on 60s teenagers with weight problems was significant. "More than most people I know, Cass was a big liver," says Michelle Phillips, the other Mama.Ĭass would let nothing stand in her way. Unusually in 60s America, she was a single mother and her outgoing personality brought no end of suitors: she was linked to a string of famous names, including John Lennon, Donovan and Peter Tork of the Monkees. ![]() Cass was determined to live her life the way it suited her.
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