Dance and Body Image

You never realize how white you are until you accidentally stand under a brighter light than the rest of the troupe. Fire & Gold Bellydance, photo by Pedro Romano (I think).

From time to time I see surveys about how belly dance has affected a woman's self esteem or body image. For me, the answers vary from day to day. Sometimes dance builds me up and I feel like the most beautiful, wonderful person in the world. Other times it tears me down and I feel like a failure who should definitely wear a bag over her head.

Dance also changes what I love and hate about myself. On a normal day, I'm not too fond of my belly fat, and often I hate how it looks in photographs of me dancing. But when I do a big Egyptian shimmy and it jiggles all over and makes the movement look like an earthquake? Then I kind of love it. On a normal day, I am happy being fair-skinned, but on a day when everyone else I'm dancing with has a tan, I feel really out of place and awkward... especially when my spot in the formation puts me under a light that shouts "HEY LOOK HER BELLY IS SO WHITE!"

Some things never change, of course. I always love my hair (long! red! just thick enough!), and I always hate my teeth (overbite! yellowness! ugh!). And I always feel just a little too tall even if most of the troupe is the same height as me (I'm not tall, just limb-y), and like I am going to take someone out with my fingernails during a spin.

Body image was much on my mind yesterday as I looked at proofs from out photo shoot and mused about what I loved and hated about my body, and how I looked compared to other members of my troupe (ladies, I think you're all more gorgeous than me, so no worrying that I told myself "Well at least I look better than XXX." I would never think that about you). Then my family came over and our conversation took an interesting turn.

True fact: As a young man entering the Air Force, my dad was 6'2 and 107 pounds. That is not a typo. One hundred and seven. At six foot two. As a full grown adult. I expressed amazement. I knew my Dad had been skinny, but I didn't know how little he had weighed back then. And let's be honest with ourselves here: I'm 5'6"ish and I don't think I've weighed 107 or less as an adult.

So my Dad started telling a string of one-liners about how skinny he was, finishing with "I've heard them all, and told most of them about myself." And it made me think about being a skinny teenager (back before I developed the curves that ensure I will never be 107), and how no one ever said any of those jokes about me. No, all skinny teenage girls get is well-meaning adults (usually older women) telling you to eat more. I got told I didn't eat enough to sustain a bird, which was pretty ridiculous because I ate until I didn't feel hungry any more, and then I ran around and biked and was a generally active girl, so obviously I was fueling myself well.

For teenage girls and adult women, the general expectation or goal is skinniness. Especially for teens, when we haven't finished developing. Our peers find other things to tease us about (for me, it was my teeth, no wonder I hate them). It's not until we become adults that skinny suddenly becomes a sin. The media holds up airbrushed images and stick-thin models, sure, but your Facebook friends constantly post memes declaring that "real women have curves" and "it wouldn't be fair to the other women if I was this awesome and skinny." They build themselves up while tearing others down. I feel like I've talked about this before, though.

I have never been more aware of my body than I have been since I became a dancer. Sometimes it's a wonderful awareness, the soreness of abs well-worked in class, the admiration of arms that creative beautiful lines. And other times it's looking at a picture of myself at the bottom of an undulation and going "great. I look pregnant. I hope no one in my family gets the wrong idea." And it's painful sometimes, that constant worry of whether I'll be able to make progress as a pro while I have braces, the question of whether I need to make serious diet changes or just run more, the possibility that weight loss will mean smaller breasts and suddenly I need to remake all my tribal bras.

I feel like this will always be a complicated relationship, this threesome between my body, dance and I. It will only get worse as I age, and my knees get creakier and my face gets lined. It's something I just have to accept, and just remember not to let the struggle ruin the things that I love about dance.          

Getting Things DONE

Don't let the general lack of blog posts make you think that I have not been dancing. Oh, I have been dancing, my friends. I've been going to class, and going to troupe practice, and practicing at home, and dancing in my mind, and shimmying when I'm bored in line at the store.

Actually, this has been a pretty good week. I have a confession: sometimes, I really do not want to go to dance class. Sometimes going to class and doing drills feels like the work I have to do in order to get better at the thing I want to do, which is, you know, dancing. But this week class has been really fun, not just because I love my teacher and my classmates, but because everyone was in a good mood, and we did fun, silly things and we decided that a new combo was called "The Hell Tornado." Really, when you have a combo name that could double as a SyFy Channel Original movie or a Rob Zombie cover band, you know you're having a good time in class. And that was before we discovered that we could perform one of our existing choreos to a ridiculous 90s pop song, which had us all laughing so hard we could barely dance.

That's not all I've been up to. On Tuesday, I devoted my practice time to career development instead and wrote a three year plan for my career, with the eventual goal of being a professional dancer. Just taking this step makes me feel more professional. I've written down my goals and how to achieve them.

One of the things I have to do is get braces. I know that there are people who think my smile is just fine, but I know I will feel more comfortable and be more hire-able if I have a standard beautiful smile. So today I had a consultation with an orthodontist, and while they said some things I didn't want to hear, it's nothing I can't handle.

So here I am, moving forward with things. No more "I want to be a pro someday" and "I will get my teeth fixed someday." Someday is now-ish.

Oh yeah, and I got a new costume in the mail today, as if The Universe (or whatever) was rewarding me for being proactive.

It's a good day to be me!

Dentistry

Today I added another place to the list of unusual spots to practice dance! I had to get my first (and hopefully last?) root canal today, and I spent some time while waiting between steps to do glute squeezes, finger waves, and floreos! I found that doing little isolations helped to distract me from the discomfort of having my poor jaw forced open for almost an hour. Then to distract myself from listening to the drill, I tried to replay favorite belly dance performances in my head, but unfortunately I don't have a very photographic memory. Sadly I ended up having to skip Jolie's class because of the root canal -- once the Novacaine wore off, my jaw started throbbing in time with my heartbeat. Yuck! The pain seems to be tapering off so I should be ready for two hours of dance fun tomorrow.