Julia+F’s+2017+OpEd+Article


 * "Tiny Dancers" Shouldn't Be So Tiny**



Dance is a beautiful artform. It’s a form of self expression, a way to release pent up emotions, a way to let go. Dancers work hard to please themselves and others, and are passionate about being the absolute best they can be. So it absolutely sucks when they stop focusing on the beauty of dance and more on how skinny they look in their leotard and tights.

Too many dancers with twigs for legs feel like they have fat thighs. Too many dancers try to defy the laws of puberty and human evolution to prevent their chests and hips from growing. Too many dancers long for a practically inverted stomach. And these distorted thoughts are promoted by several ballet industries.

My former ballet studio told tons of perfectly healthy girls they had gained too much weight over the summer and that they needed to “be thinner.” This sent girls spiraling into problems; tears were shed, people were ashamed of their bodies, and tons of eating disorders sprouted.

My former ballet instructor’s daughter goes to a ballet school in Russia. Having Russian genetics, she was naturally extremely thin. Any girl who looked at her would be envious, yet somehow she always saw herself as fat when she looked in the mirror. It got to the point of stage two anorexia; two of her organs failed, and she was out of ballet and admitted to a hospital. She wanted to be thin to be seen as a more beautiful dancer, because somehow the ballet world has taught us that beautiful=skinny. She starved herself for what she loved the most, yet what she loved the most was what was destroying her.

One of my close friends has a naturally raging metabolism. She can eat a double-double, animal fries, and a shake and still look like she has absolutely zero meat on her bones. Her sister, while still having a high metabolism, was curvier. Her body type was simply different than her sisters. One of her ballet teachers told her she was looking “slow,” and she somehow interpreted that as fat. Now, she eats 500 calories a day. She has dropped 30 pounds. Her collarbone sticks out more than anyone else’s I’ve ever seen, her face is pale, and she’s constantly broken down. She is 10 years old. She thinks she’s doing what will make her look better as a dancer, and despite how extremely unhealthy it is, she gets compliments from her teachers, so why would she stop?

Then there’s the girl who you would least expect to ever have struggled with this. She loved food, baking, and was proud to be able to eat a whole Chipotle burrito in one sitting. Sure she got down about how she looked in the mirror sometimes, but ultimately she was enjoying life and not focusing too much on the weight. Then she dislocated her knee. She realized that her life was spiraling out of control, and the only thing she thought she may be able to “fix” to benefit ballet was her weight. She knew her studio wasn’t happy that she wasn’t abnormally underweight. So maybe if she just worked on getting thinner, by the time her knee heeled she’d still be in perfect dance shape. So she restricted to the max. It worked, she got thinner in an unhealthy amount of time. And she restricted for a while. But it didn’t last, and intense periods of bingeing and restricting cycled around until all she could think about was food and how she would eat everything and then eat nothing. Slowly the “thinner” girl was gone and she was right back to square one physically. Mentally, she felt s crewed. She is constantly hard on herself and constantly trying to “change” and “improve.”

Th e ballet industry promoted this. I have teachers who said that finally I was “looking good,” or that I had lost weight and it was “fantastic.” It made me realize that some people truly weren’t looking for the passion in dancers. They were looking at how tightly the costume fit. They don’t care if we love ballet, they care how sli m our thighs are. They convinced us all that if we had an ounce of fat on our bodies we would never compare to those who were slimmer. Ballet changed from our passion that we should be able to love to something that would only love us if we were an Extra Extra Small.

If anything, that experience has made me realize how ridiculous we can all be. Before anyone ever tries to change or improve, they need to accept themselves for how they are right now. Not for how they think they should be, but for how they currently appear. It’s fine to have goals, but it is never okay to let them consume you to the extreme. No one’s worth is based on their weight, whether a ballerina or not. Every single person is genuinely beautiful, and if they have goals, that is great! But if they let their goals take over to a unique point of unhealthiness, something needs to change. Every single girl at my old studio was effected when they told us we needed to lose weight, and it breaks my heart every time they complain about their body. No passion is worth a life-threatening, mentally scarring experience. And I wish some studios (and some people) would wake up and realize everybody is beautiful, that someone else would die to look like them, and that it doesn’t matter how thin you are, but how passionate you are about doing what you love.

Everyone. Is. Beautiful, and whether you look like the “typical ballerina” or not does. Not. matter, no matter what any teachers or peers say. Keep ballet as a beautiful artform; don’t let it change into a fight between you and the scale.