Written by: Manahil Chaudhry
Edited by: Maggie Huang
Ballet is a highly detailed art form that emphasizes gracefulness and flexibility to celebrate the extensive limits of the body. Through graceful pirouettes and artistic lighting, movement is used to tell a story, as seen in famous plays like The Nutcracker. However, this emphasis on disciplined movements can culminate in a standard of perfectionism, culture-driven dancers, coaches, and parents. Adolescents are pressured by those around them to maintain slim figures and train constantly to hone their practice. According to previous studies, around 50% of professional dancers suffer from eating disorders, often getting lower nutrients than recommended by dieticians (Chaikali et al., 2023). With adolescence being an important time for rapid physical and emotional changes, this comes with high nutritional demands to fuel the body with the necessary nutrition it needs. However, maintaining this slim figure required while going through these bodily changes can be difficult, leading many dancers to turn to unhealthy habits like vomiting, restrictive diets, skipping meals, or dehydrating techniques, all of which are behaviors linked with disordered eating (Chaikali et al., 2023). These unhealthy habits can negatively affect teenagers, causing them to menstruate less, have low energy, and have higher risks of injury, while also causing self-esteem issues. To properly address the problem surrounding disordered eating in young ballet dancers, it is important to first explore why such a culture exists in the first place and its effects on young dancers.
A big part of ballet is its attention to aesthetics: from how the costumes are designed, to lighting, to the bodies of the dancers themselves. Thinness is a highly valued trait in ballet dancers, a feature that continues to persist due to comments from instructors. In a sample of 500 college-level dancers, it was found that comments from teachers and peers praising extensive dieting, comparing weight and constant obsession over weight have contributed to adult disordered eating. One dancer, Amelia, corroborates this through her experience of directors and choreographers commenting on her body, which led her to obsessively exercise and restrict her food intake, all of which were signs of an eating disorder (“Eating Disorders”, 2022). This constant pressure ballerina dancers feel from instructors to lose weight to feel worthy of dancing is a leading factor to why many dancers develop eating disorders. Especially when a lot of ballet dancers start young, they take these comments more seriously as the people they look up to are saying them. This is why they often develop eating disorders to lose weight quickly to get on the good side of their mentors. Targeting such vulnerable children continues a cycle of disordered eating as dancers continue to try and fit the standards drilled into them since childhood.
Overall, disordered eating is caused by decades of comments on young dancers' bodies by their mentors and peers. These comments are then internalized, especially as dancers age into adolescence, leading them to take drastic measures to lose weight. They feel the pressure to fit in to get better parts and to earn the respect of their colleagues, even if it ruins their health in the long term. There have been efforts to foster a more inclusive environment in ballet welcoming to all dancers that emphasizes less on the body but focuses more on dancing. With the work of individuals to combat these stereotypes, a more inclusive environment can be built to help protect dancers from unrealistic body standards, lessening the normalization of eating disorders.
References:
Chaikali, Panagiota et.al (2023). Body Composition, Eating Habits, and Disordered Eating Behaviors among Adolescent Classical Ballet Dancers and Controls. Children. 2023, 10(2):379. https://doi.org/10.3390/children10020379
“Eating disorders and the ballet industry: why change needs to occur.” Butterfly, 27 Jan. 2022, butterfly.org.au/eating-disorders-and-the-ballet-industry-why-change-needs-to-occur/
Rolz, Isabella. A ballet of ‘living hell’: Ex-dancer recounts her battle with anorexia. The Washington Post, 11 Nov. 2018, www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/a-ballet-of-living-hell-ex-dancer-recounts-her-battle-with-anorexia/2018/11/09/adad582c-d169-11e8-b2d2-f397227b43f0_story.html
Silverii, G.A. et. al (2021). Eating psychopathology in ballet dancers: a meta-analysis of observational studies. Eat Weight Disord 27, 405–414 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40519-021-01213-5
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