Most of my dance career I’ve pursued non-ballet. Jazz, modern, tap, contemporary, even a little hip hop. See I’m barely 5’3” and am curvyyyy. It’s been fine. Until recently.

I’m done pretending otherwise. The truth is:

  I love ballet.

I’ve tried hating it for so long but I just can’t anymore. I love pushing your body to it’s absolute limits, trying to do something it was really never meant to do. I love working so hard at plie’s, right out of the gate, that you’ve already sweat buckets. I love trying again and again until you nail that triple pirouette. I love pushing through when your body feels like it’s going to collapse any second. I love that my physical body becomes a beautiful, effortless work of art. Even though it’s not actually effortless and you’re potentially destroying your body to make it look that way.

If I love it so much why have I many times declared it to be my worst enemy? For one very simple reason, to protect myself. To make it easier to shrug it off when ballet teachers took one look at me and then ignored me throughout class. To be able to laugh when someone asks “Is it hard to be a dancer when you don’t have a dancer’s body?” So until recently I’ve been able to just shake off the comments, the looks, the unfairness of being ignored because of the way I’m built.

Having spent most of my life in the dance world I’ve seen many, many struggles with weight. Even outside of the dance world. There’s so much pressure to fit that mold. Really, though, it’s more than that. It’s not even about a mold, because I know people who fit that “mold” and are still dissatisfied. It’s been ingrained in us to not be satisfied with what we’re given, what we have. Whether that’s looks, family, financial circumstances, career, etc. A perfect example is me and my mom. She has the most fabulously curly hair you’ve ever seen but she’s always wanted straight, silky hair. Which I happen to have. And I’d give anything to have HER hair. It’s really so silly. Yet how many of us can fully say that not one thing comes to mind about yourself that you wish was different? Not many, I’m willing to bet. I’ve spent years of my life teaching high school girls and trying to ingrain in them that they are each a beautiful and unique creation. Often tears well up in my eyes as I plead with them to not despise their bodies and I see tears reflected in their own eyes as they acknowledge what a struggle it is.

There are two main verses I emphasis when I have these “love your body” talks.

“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book was written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I would count them, the are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you.”

Psalm 139:13-18

I remind them that they were created with purpose and planning. They were stitched together by a loving Creator. The other verse takes a different approach.

“Woe to him who strives with him who formed him, a pot among earthen pots! Does the clay say to him who form it, ‘What are you making?’ or ‘Your work has no handles’? Woe to him who says to a father, ‘What are you begetting?’ or to a woman, ‘With what are you in labor?’”    Isaiah 45: 9-10

This verse is more of a harsh reminder. Who are we to tell the creator of the universe that he made a mistake? When I’m choreographing none of my students would dare turn around and tell me that my choreography is no good. Or if they did they’d be in trouble.

What does this have to do with my love/hate for ballet? Well, while I spent years encouraging and challenging girls to accept how they look and embrace it and love it I wasn’t really listening myself. I didn’t think  I needed to learn that because I thought I already knew it. I’ve spent my life in front of floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall mirrors and never had an issue. Or so I thought. I just never knew how deeply I had buried that insecurity.

Then simultaneously I got married and the studio I had taught at for years shut down and the company I had been dancing with moved to Connecticut two and a half hours away. Here I was with all this free time and no need to rush to find a job I didn’t love because I was no longer the sole provider. So what to do? There were(still are, really, I’m still in this place of indecision) so many possibilities. Tommy, my husband, works at a university so I could go to college for free. When I graduated high school I moved straight to Houston to pursue dance full-time, so I’ve never been to college. (I don’t know why I’m explaining all this. The only people reading this are probably my mom, sisters and husband who all know everything about me.) Do I full-time work on writing, which is something I’ve always loved but only dabbled in? Do I keep dancing?

It didn’t take me too long to realize I could never give up dancing. And not because it’s what I’ve always done and what I’m used to and comfortable with. But because it’s such a part of me, of who I was created to be. And I knew I wanted to pursue ballet more. So for Christmas I got new ballet shoes and even dug out my old pointe shoes for fun and decided to take an adult ballet class twenty minutes from my house.

Then we went to Marshall’s and I had a meltdown. It’s so silly. There were these pants I wanted to try on. So did Tommy so we went into separate dressing rooms. When I came out I basically threw the items I had at the sales associate and when Tommy asked if anything fit I didn’t look at him, just started walking and said “Let’s just leave. I want to get out of here right now.” Tears filled my eyes, threatening to overflow for all of Marshall’s to see. Tommy quickly paid for his pants and led me to the car while I struggled to keep it all together. “What happened?” He asked, oh so gently. I spoke rather angrily but only because sometimes that helps me not to cry. I told him that I had grabbed a medium size and that they didn’t fit the way these pants are supposed to fit and that even a large probably wouldn’t. If I wanted these pants to fit “correctly” I would need an extra large.

Extra large!

As I said it out loud I lost it and starting crying. You know, the ugly kind. Tears and snot mingling together. Not pretty. He wanted to know what brought this on? It couldn’t be just a pair of pants that was causing this breakdown. He was right. But I said I didn’t know the cause but as I said it I realized I did know. I also realized that it’s been building over the past few weeks. This feeling of shame at the way I’m built. This almost disgust at my womanly hips and my solidly built legs.

As I shared all this, I also knew why this was all coming up. As I thought about and dreamed about and talked about ballet, all the old dirt was coming up. The ballet classes where I’ve dissolved into tears, at the age of twenty-one, because I knew my ballet teacher wasn’t seeing how hard I was trying and even how I was improving and I was certain it was because of the way I was built. The disappointment I’ve felt when we’ve been learning a ballet piece and the joy I felt doing it and the feeling that I was doing well until I was told I’d enter later, in the last minute of the dance, with the other “modern dancers”. I laughed and pretended I was totally okay with that even though I felt crushed. And I knew I’d experience more of that as I pursued my passion for ballet.

As I poured out my heart Tommy reminded me of a young dancer I met this past summer and an emotional conversation we had with her. She told us of all the ridicule she got for wanting to dance, even from her parents. That it was a waste of time because she didn’t have a “dancer’s body”. She reminded me so much of me, a spirited, curvy young girl. There’s much temptation to want to have an “I’ll show them” attitude but that gets exhausting. I told this sweet girl, with tears streaming down my face,  that her, and her body, were capable of dancing beautifully. That no one could tell her that she couldn’t do it. That even when her own parents didn’t come to her shows that she had a heavenly Father who was watching her with so much pride and joy and tears in his eyes. That he put the passion to dance in her and no one should tell her otherwise.

Here I was needing to hear the same words. I knew the only way I could be free to dance was if I believed that truly, for myself. To not compare myself to others, to not despise certain parts of my physique. To embrace the fact that I am uniquely and wonderfully made and that while I can’t pull of a certain type of pants there are other things I can rock that others can’t. And neither body type is better. It’s beautiful the diversity that surrounds us on so many levels. It’s time we embrace it and lose our shame and be free to be what we were created to be.