“I started dancing when I was 4 and felt immediately in love with it. I’ve never been stick-thin as a child but I wasn’t overweight, I was just a healthy girl. During my early teenage years I was constantly told by my ballet teacher that I had to eat less and loose weight. One day during a general rehearsal with the whole school in the studio she paused the music, told me to walk to her chair, pinched the skin over the hip bones and said loudly: “This is not supposed to be there! That’s why you don’t dance well.” I had never felt so embarrassed of myself.
Later on I started struggling with anorexia and eating disorders and I lost a lot of weight in the most unhealthy way destroying my body, loosing my period and my happiness. Then I was told “Now you look good. You see that it was possible to have a decent body type?”.
After months of restrictions / bingeing circle I decided that it wasn’t worth it and that I couldn’t spend the rest of my life trapped into that spiral. I recovered from my eating disorder, graduated and now dance is my job. There’s no such thing as “ballet body type”. Don’t let mean comments get in your way, surround yourself with positive and encouraging people and make your body your best friend.”
-Anonymous
