What is the ideal ballet body? Let’s consider what the desirable attributes of a female ballet dancer’s body are. One must have legs that are straight but not hyperextended. This is for elegant lines. One must have the right types of muscles, tendons and sinews for both explosive jumps and extended, slow adagio work. Backs that are straight and neither hunched nor swayed. Necks that are elongated. Hips that aren’t too wide (there doesn’t seem to be such a thing as too narrow). Breasts that are small enough not to bounce. Torsos that are shorter than one’s legs. Slender physiques without rounded bellies. Flexible hip joints, backs and ankles.
While I was growing up, I accepted these standards for the body I was expected to have as a ballet dancer as non-negotiables. My body didn’t have all of the attributes above, so I worked hard to minimize my body’s short-comings and augment the things that suited the ideal mold. I stretched and stretched. I jumped and jumped. I practiced and practiced my pointe work and other kinds of exercises for strength training. I exercised and dieted hard enough so that my breasts never fully grew and my periods were light and infrequent.
When I failed to achieve the perfect ballet body – when despite stretching I always remained a fraction of an inch away from perfect hip turnout, many inches short of a high-enough jump, and struggled to keep my belly from rounding – struggled not to eat when I was hungry, I hated my body. In turn, I hated myself.
It’s a strange thing to both hate the body that one was born into and to hate oneself for not being able to transform one’s natural, biological situation through sheer will and training. I don’t quite know what to make of my years spent trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon and I don’t think there is anyone to blame for it. It seems clear that I didn’t have to be a ballet dancer. I knew that there were many other forms of dance with more flexible standards for bodies. So why didn’t I just switch tracks? Why did I keep banging my head against the wall for ballet?
Further, why did my failure feel like an injustice of some sort? What was unjust? That I wanted my body to have the look and functionality it would need to achieve at high levels in a rather elite and narrow art form? Why did I feel cheated that my body fell short of this despite my best efforts? Why did I think I deserved my body to be other than it was? To do something outside of what it could do? Why did I take this as both a failure of the universe and a failure in myself?
I spent years bemoaning the world and myself in this way and, honestly, it seems both vain and childish to me now. I no longer think that wanting something a lot, particularly something that turns out to be impossible to achieve, means that I deserve to have it. I wonder why I ever thought that being disappointed – by the world, by myself – for something there just isn’t and wasn’t any help for – is both a universal tragedy and the basis for self-hatred. I’d like to say I’m entirely over it. Rationally I am. Emotionally, in some ways and on some days, I’m still a child.
Copyright © Aili Whalen 2025. All rights reserved.
Leave a Reply