dimmed lights.

Content Warning: Eating Disorders ​ Shmmacck! Shmmacck! Shmmacck! ​ The sound of my dance professor clapping her hands together echoed in my ears. The sharp sound reminded me of gunshots at a horse race. Filling my lungs with one last breath, my shoulders drew back, and my feet pulled me forward into the combination. Today’s combo consisted of a movement where we settled into a full squat and proceeded to march in circles around the gymnasium smacking the pads of our feet on the ground in an awkward gallop. ​ I could feel the bottoms of my heels collecting the dust, dry skin, and hair that littered the floor, but I was too focused on catching her eye. For the past four weeks leading up to finals, my professor had ignored me, barely making eye contact with me. I was used to being invisible in a room of skinny, long-legged ballerinas: the romantic arch in their back, the simple, elegant extension of each leg, the way their thin fingertips barely grazed the air. No matter how I moved my body, it was just a fact, my visual lines were inadequate. When my professor finally saw me she looked at me with glassy eyes. Eyes that held no sign of interest. Eyes that told me she could see right through me. ​

My conscience rotated through the comments I had heard on repeat for the majority of my life reciting the verses perfectly. Don’t eat so much...you’ll never be able to get your ass off the ground. You’ve got man’s legs. Guys would never be able to partner with you. You’re a dancer? Oh, I definitely thought you were a gymnast. Then my mind formed its own questions. Why couldn’t you just be light and graceful as her? Why couldn’t you move like them? I continued to march across the floor with three other dancers shifting my eyes from my professor to the ground. Each mental insult seemed to pile up on my shoulders forcing the false confidence to slowly bleed out of me. It all began in high school. All 14 girls in my ballet class would stand in front of a wall of mirrors only in sheer pink tights and black leotards. Every contour of our body was outlined, and we would spend those next three hours sucking in our stomachs. Our teachers would tell us it was important to be narrow, like a piece of toast sliding into a toaster. I’m not sure when, “tuck in your tummies little ballerinas!” became, “suck in your gut,” but from the age of four and on, dance teachers were more focused on jabbing their finger into the belly flab on your stomach than instilling even a little confidence in us. I consider myself fairly lucky compared to certain girls in my classes. The owner of my childhood studio took up the ritual of shaming her own stepdaughter calling her, “chubby like her father,” in front of the entire class. The stepdaughter began to drink herself unconscious and was kicked off the team before we’d made it through our freshman year of high school. I moved studios my senior year, and even at this larger more progressive studio, the teacher would remind us that the dance industry valued looks over talent. When I arrived on campus, I soon realized I had not left that culture behind. Professors and graduate students were known to only cast dancers who were a size two and below because, “the body lines looked better.” My breaking point came during one graduate student’s final project. I was sitting in a section of the auditorium with a large number of students and faculty when the woman strolled onto the stage. Her body was wrapped in a white duct tape bikini and she had a cowboy hat placed over her forehead. The woman began twirling and spiraling her body in all directions, every so often screaming into her hat. Her shoulders were tense, and she seemed to spasm and jolt her body every time she began a new segment of movements. A minute into her piece, the woman jolted so hard that one of her breasts slipped out of the duct tape bikini. I sat deadly-still, my stomach twisting in horror. This poor girl, I thought. She’s been expos— The woman continued to create intricate circles on the stage as the duct tape slid further and further down her body until she was standing stark naked in front of the crowd of faculty and undergraduates. The white tape sat in a pile in the middle of the stage, and she continued dancing. She chose to expose her body, reclaiming every part of her. She valued the strong, powerful limbs the universe had given her, and it showed in the way she moved, using her muscles to push her up and across the stage. This graduate student did not see her body as a burden but rather a tool to her success as a dancer, a key to something new and unrecognizable from the current standards of the dance world. She bowed, put on a black robe and joined the rest of us in the audience to watch the next piece. I wish I could say she opened my eyes to the possibilities, but I knew I could never bear what I considered the most sensitive, hidden part of myself. My body had been claimed. The bruises on my knees from kneeling over a toilet and the hunger pangs ripping through my stomach told me I had lost the fight. It was too late, and I had let myself fall too far. I had dedicated almost fifteen years to dance, and while I loved the art, the feeling would never be mutual. For my own sanity, I needed the voices to stop. I sent in my withdrawal from the dance program within the next week. This sudden decision to amputate such a large part of my life caused me to spiral. I sent myself to therapy almost immediately after winter break; I was fragile yet self-destructive. I was a shell that would softly crumble into a pile of dust if anyone accidentally brushed against me. A fresh new page waiting for me; a fresh new life not defined by my physical appearance but by real talent. I spent the semester holed up in my single dorm room when I wasn’t in class or in therapy, slowly inching my way to a version of myself that could actually be happy and fulfilled without dance. A year later, sometimes I still lock the bedroom door and turn off all the lights. I let my body settle back into the ballet lines and the pirouettes I had known my whole life. Slowly lifting my leg into the air, I’ll feel that same familiar force both pushing and pulling my body into a perfect arabesque. My eyes latch onto my figure in the mirror...and I smile like I have not done in years.