Valentine's Day! And Face Character Auditions!

So I've been sidelined with a nasty migraine for the past four days, to the point where I actually had to call into work for two days. Not pleasant. And just an FYI, if you do happen to get sick and you need to call in more than one day in a row, it's OK. I found out that they will still give you a point, but as long as it's a continuous illness, they will only give you one point, even if you're out for three days. I got a doctor's note, which I'm hoping will maybe give me some leeway and hopefully get the point off my record, but if not, it's not the worst thing in the world.

Anywho! Yesterday morning was the Face Character auditions at the Animal Kingdom rehearsal facility. I gave away my shift specifically so that I could go these, because Disney asked that nobody miss a scheduled shift to attend the auditions. The audition didn't start until 9, but they asked that people start showing up around 8. I took the bus with a couple friends and we got there at 8, and the line was already out of control. There was an unbelievable amount of girls there. We stood in line until our turn and then they measured us. The woman doing the measuring told me I was 66" and to remember that number. After that we went to a table with a woman sitting behind it who asked us to write down our names, heights, and gender (which was silly considering Disney had advertised this audition as a female only for CPs), and gave us numbers. I got to be 279 After that we sat down on the floor in this gym-like room until 9, at which point a guy came out and said they would be taking us back in groups. I think 450 girls showed up to this audition, this building was jam-packed with people. I ended up being in the third group of people to go back. When they called us, they first took us to this big dance room and had us line up along the walls in numerical order. They took groups of 50 at a time out of the room while the rest of us waited.

When my group was called, they took us down the hallway to a smaller dance room and told us to line up in rows of 10 on these markers on the floor. There was man and a woman standing at the front of the room waiting for us. The man happened to be the guy who coordinated the first audition I went to in Minneapolis for the CP, which was a nice little coincidence, but he wasn't really in charge here. They told us they were looking for girls for the "core princess group", which was nice to know since on the audition flier there were no specifics on who the audition was for. The woman told us that we would move forward in the room in groups of ten and all that would happen is that they'd look at us. If they liked you, they'd call your number at the end and you'd move forward in the auditions. That was it. They also made it a point to tell us that just because our number doesn't get called doesn't mean we aren't attractive, it just means that we don't have the features they're looking for in the characters. They also said that if we came up to them afterwards and asked what we could do differently, they'd say absolutely nothing, they don't want anyone crash-dieting or changing their face to get a face character role. That just sounds insane to me, I can't imagine getting plastic surgery JUST to be a face character. Definitely not worth it.

At any rate, they looked at the groups of 10 pretty quickly and at the end they only called out two numbers. It's kind of depressing but at the same time, we're all in the same boat as almost everyone else, so I'm not going to let it get to me.

I think the audition is a good experience and I think that everyone should go to one at least once, but it's also really unnerving. Not because of the casting directors, but because of all the other girls at the audition. I have never felt like I was being judged as much as I was yesterday. At one point when I got up to go to the restroom in the big gym, every single person in that room watched me walk out. It's a really terrible feeling. Wouldn't it be nice if we as women could stop hating and judging for like 5 minutes and realize we're all in the same boat? Good lord.

I'm also in the process of trying to think of more blog topics but it's hard because it seems like I do the same thing every day at work. So we'll see how I do as I go along.