This essay won’t win me any friends among my peers in the voice over profession. Some will find it offensive and insensitive.
I’m gonna go there anyway.
This isn’t my first time navigating controversial territory: I survived hypersensitive political correctness on the college campus. I’m a refugee from buttoned-down, language-sanitized corporate America. I’ve worked in the one media setting where unfiltered raw opinion rules the day – live, big-city AM talk radio.
It also helps that I grew up in blunt-talking, F-bomb dropping New Jersey.
Certain topics demand bluntness – no cutesy euphemisms or safely ambiguous phrasing to soften the blow, and no hiding behind decorum just to duck the subject.
I don’t waste time wringing my hands over who may be offended – especially if there’s an uncomfortable but important truth screaming to be pointed out.
But if you can see past your hurt feelings, I promise there’s a valuable message to be found here.
Speaking His Mind on His Way Out the Door
Paul Strikwerda is well-known within the pro voice acting community for his prolific writing. Boasting the longest running and most widely read blog in the business, for years he’s served as an articulate thought leader and at times a lightning rod, fearlessly taking provocative stands on issues critical to folks who make a career doing voiceover work.
Recently Paul announced his retirement. To mark the occasion, he released a series of short videos explaining why he’s getting out. (This also doubled as a brutally honest assessment of the state of this industry, but that’s a discussion for another day.)
Primarily he’s weathered some serious health setbacks that have diminished his physical capabilities. Some years ago, Paul suffered a massive stroke while working in his booth. He describes a frightening brush with death and long period of rehabilitation.
He’ll be the first to admit it was due to his very unhealthy lifestyle:
I thought I was leading my best life as a serial sitter, in my sound-proof voiceover studio…I ate whatever I wanted to eat and how much I wanted to eat, and when I was done recording and editing…I watched Netflix all night long, still sitting on my big fat behind…They say sitting is the new smoking, and leading a successful sedentary life eventually caught up with me big-time… Overweight and out of shape, I didn’t even know I had atrial fibrillation…a dangerously fast and irregular heartbeat.
Paul then did what he does best – he got provocative and said something that piqued my interest:
There’s a reason why so many of my voice over colleagues are overweight and diabetic and have turned to drugs like Ozempic. They sit still all day long and stare at the screen. Because they’re voice actors, their looks don’t matter, so you can get away with being a slob.
Wow. I’d never stopped to consider how widespread a problem this was in our line of work. On further reflection, I realized he was right.
I’ll go even further. And here’s where I’m bound to get a few people seriously pissed off.
Fat and (not so) Happy?
In mid-2023 I attended one of our industry’s more prominent conferences, and later that year went to the biggest and most popular annual social event on the calendar. All told, I encountered roughly a few hundred fellow voice actors.
Frankly, I was appalled.
There’s no polite way to say this. A startling number were just as Paul described – varying degrees of overweight and unhealthy, both men and women. Bloated. Flabby. Zero muscle tone. Some looked pallid, sluggish, sickly. Others were disturbingly, morbidly obese and slovenly. Lumbering super-heavyweights. Adipose tissue spilling out of size 4XL and 5XL shirts. Fat rolls and swollen cankles galore.
Pardon my French, but it was fucking nauseating.
To be fair, it wasn’t everybody, but the ratio of vigorous and healthy to rotund and unfit was hard to ignore. Not that I’m expecting everyone to look like Heidi Klum or Tom Brady, but come on, people. How about a little self-care?
The National Association of Voice Actors conducts an annual “State of Voiceover” survey and reports statistics it compiles about income, experience level, union status and other key metrics. I can’t help but think they should include data about the general physical health of voice talents, because judging from what I observed, for too many it’s abysmal.
How could they neglect and disrespect themselves like this?
It’s Not a Social Justice Issue – It’s a Life-or-Death Issue
In many corners of society today fatness is met with an air of resignation, as if this epidemic of obesity is our new normal – a collective shrug of the shoulders and a blasé “Whaddaya gonna do?”
Worse, others elevate obesity to some sort of noble crusade for equity and recognition. I have a real problem with the fat acceptance movement which disingenuously normalizes morbid obesity. Its advocates cloak themselves in the same righteous indignation usually reserved for legitimate fights over discrimination due to race, gender, age, sexual preference or physical and mental disability. Some even insist obesity is a disability.
It’s treated as an immutable trait worthy of the same empathy as other protected legal classes.
No. To steal from Lady Gaga, you were not “born this way.” You did this to yourself.
Nor should this be celebrated as “body positivity” – that other trendy misnomer often accompanied by the dangerously contradictory phrase “health at any size.” I’ll say the quiet part out loud: obesity is physically unattractive. You do not look good, never mind sexy. To the contrary, you look unhealthy, which is in fact what you are – unhealthy. It doesn’t matter how you try to dress it up or rationalize it with delusional happy-talk about seeing the beauty despite all the corpulence.
Nope.
Let’s get real here and douse this frustrating nonsense with the shocking bucket of ice water it deserves: obesity is second only to smoking as the leading preventable cause of death (and may soon jump into first place). Statistics abound chronicling the astonishing numbers of obesity-related illness and mortality rates across America and the globe. On the economic front, it has a staggering impact on businesses.
The adverse effects and risks of the sedentary lifestyle and an awful diet are deadly serious. If you’re an office worker anchored to your desk for hours a day, a homebound remote worker, a couch potato parked in front of the TV, a habitual gamer or anyone mired in a perpetual state of inactivity, you’re on a path to obesity, hypertension, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, heart disease, stroke and cancer. You’re a ticking time bomb.
It’s especially easy for voice actors to get sucked into this vortex of inertia and lethargy. We sit all day doing marketing and administrative tasks, and cram ourselves into isolated spaces, spending hours recording and editing. God help you if during these extended periods of immobility, you’re mindlessly gorging on globs of sugar and sodium-infused empty calories and carbs.
You are not meant to live in this manner.
Redefining Accountability: First Things First…Business Later
I follow all the big names in our profession who teach best practices in marketing and business planning. Every day I’m bombarded with videos, podcasts, social media alerts, email blasts and newsletters talking ad nauseam about how to take accountability for your business success.
Yet why no accountability for your own health? Why do so many in this business possess a laser-like focus on executing their plan to perfection, but don’t seem to give a good goddamn about taking proper care of themselves?
Without your health, none of that other stuff matters.
Even from a pure business standpoint, if nothing else, wouldn’t you want to protect the vessel that houses your instrument, your money-maker, your engine of income?
Take a new kind of accountability.
You need to quite literally get off your fat ass, right now. That’s right, I just said that. Step away from your PC. Rise up from your chair. The work can wait. You’ve got a bigger priority to tackle.
Schedule time in your day to get physically active. Hit the gym. Go take a one hour walk. Go swimming. An elliptical machine. A bike. Something. Anything. Just move.
Radically overhaul your diet. Ditch the processed, packaged stuff and all the sugary snack cakes and bags of chips. Swear off the fast food, booze and tobacco. Toss your salt shaker in the trash. Learn to incorporate a sensible balance of nutrient-dense, raw foods and lean proteins – including legumes, nuts, and the “rainbow” of colors of fresh veggies and fruits. Get cozy with eating plant-based and for “gut health,” feeding your microbiome.
Hydrate like crazy. Get a deep, restorative night of sleep. Get a full-blown medical check-up and referrals to specialists, if necessary. Fold self-care and fitness into your daily routine. If you can’t do it on your own, find supportive people who can guide you, motivate you and point you to trusted info and resources.
Reorder your thinking toward cultivating healthy habits. Or get ready to get sick and possibly drop dead.
Lest you think I’m a judgmental fat-shaming asshole, I’ll offer this in the spirit of full transparency: all this goes for me too.
In early 2020, I was dealt a sobering reality check of my own. I had a heart attack while working out at the local YMCA on a Tuesday evening, and found myself one short but panic-stricken hour later splayed out on a table in the cardiac catheterization lab. I underwent an emergency angioplasty – 99% blockage in a major artery, two stents inserted. I spent three days in the intensive care unit.
It came as a shock because I was sure I was in decent enough shape. I came to learn I wasn’t the picture of health I thought I was, even if I was throwing around kettle bells and free weights. A combination of family history of multiple diseases, a crappy diet, high stress and poor sleep hygiene had contributed to the obesity (40 pounds overweight), hypertension, high cholesterol and atherosclerosis that pushed me into the danger zone.
As I lay in that ICU bed – and later, recovering at home – I thought about how I had let myself go. Then I thought about people I knew who were far fatter and recklessly unhealthier than I, and what troubles might be awaiting them down the road. After that I thought about friends, former classmates and co-workers who never saw their mid-40s or 50s, because they were already dead and buried.
My medical emergency was one hell of a rude awakening. I don’t want any surprises like that ever again, if I can help it. That’s why I now obsess over my health. I’ve dropped most of the weight, I routinely follow up with what feels like a small village of medical specialists, and am committed to staying healthy and fit.
And as rude as this may come off, it’s a commitment I’ve doubled down on in the wake of meeting some of my voice acting peers in person. Honestly, they served as a scary reminder. They’d do well to make similar life changes for the sake of both their business and their personal well-being.
So again, sorry / not sorry if you’re offended. At least you’re offended and alive. It beats sick or dead.
