‘Mama Cass’ Elliot Died Almost 50 Years Ago, But Her Memory Is Still Obscured By Fatphobia

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Present-day fatphobia contributes to a continued lack of understanding about how Elliot actually died, in part because “confronting the possibility that Cass may have died due to extreme dieting challenges our idealization of diet culture.”

I first heard that story sometime in my late teens, shortly after discovering the song “California Dreamin’” in the way that young people love to discover retro music . At the time, it occurred to me as a mere historical oddity—!—but now, having learning more about Elliot’s short and pain-filled life, I’m struck by the fact that one of the few fat women in pre-aughts music history is forever tethered to an ugly urban legend implying that her death was brought about by food.

For most fat people, this fear of gluttony is nothing new; we’re constantly told that our bodies are too big, that we’re too lazy, that we’re driving up health-care premiums simply by existing in our skin. I’ll never know Elliot or understand what it felt like to be one of the few highly visible fat women in a society marred by unchecked fatphobia, but I think I can guess at what it might have been like to stand onstage every night before an audience who saw you as either a threat or a joke.

“[Elliot’s] official cause of death was labeled as ‘fatty myocardial degeneration due to obesity’—but that would still be a shocking cause of death for such a young woman and has largely been refuted,” Pandell tells me. “From the research I’ve done and the doctors I spoke to, it seems the most likely cause of death was extreme dieting in combination with long-term substance abuse.

 

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Thank you Emma Spector for this wonderful article about one of my favorite singers, Cass Elliot.

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