Wow, so this woman sums up much more articulately than me some of the thoughts I’ve been having about the importance of discussing body image and how to present body image through dance. As dancers although there is a high incidence of eating disorders and demands for perfection I think there is also respect for our bodies -for all we ask them to do. I believe this makes dance an ideal tool for addressing the topic of body image but I might be a little biased.
I’ve never told anyone these things. My parents, my sister, my friends – no one. So heads up. You’re the first to know.
For the last few years, I have grown, slowly but steadily, to despise the way my body looks.
When I was a kid, I was always told how skinny I was. I didn’t break fifty pounds until I was eight years old. In high school I was always the smallest – height and weight – of my friends. I grew up knowing, somehow, intuitively, that ‘being skinny’ was something good, that it was something I should maintain. In high school, that belief was confirmed and reinforced by magazines, friends who were constantly ‘dieting’, and my school’s insistence on athletic rigor and social ostracism of students who didn’t fit the body ideal. But I was always warned that, as a woman, ‘my time would come’, I would have kids…
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Kelly Bowker 