Dear Dancer: Expect Your Body to Change.
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There’s a lot of aesthetic pressure in dance. It’s important to talk about it realistically without sugar coating or ignoring the fact that it exists. Even amid the aesthetic pressure, dancers need to move forward through their teens and early 20s with the expectation that their body will change.
Instead, the aesthetic pressure can set up the false goal or expectation that a dancer should try to maintain their pre-pubescent body. Not only is this aim harmful physically and, in the extreme can lead to stunted growth, there’s also great mental harm and anguish caused by this goal.
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The facts: your body should change
Especially during the teenage years, people’s bodies naturally change. This isn’t any different for dancers. Being highly active does not mean you should see no physical evolution. Dancers will often add additional weight as muscle, but in order to actually have a first period, body fat is necessary. Some studies even indicate a required 17% body fat threshold to achieve this.
Puberty in dance
For some reason, a lot of ballet educators seem to have forgotten that puberty is a reality of life. It’s a reality that can’t be avoided by ballet dancers, and therefore, educators have to stop praising the long “ballerina bodies” of pre-pubescent 11-year-olds.
Many clients of mine have expressed that their body issues started as they went through puberty. They often recall: Before then I felt that my body was the ideal for ballet. Sometimes these dancers receive feedback from teachers as their bodies change, and that makes them feel like something is wrong. If a teacher criticizes a dancer’s body as they’re gaining necessary weight, this can have a lasting mental impact.
Unfortunately, even if someone supports a dancer through their physical changes, the dancer may still conclude on their own that these changes are bad and that they should do something to halt or stop them.
Take a moment to recall for yourself if your body image or self-concept shifted through puberty. It’s powerful to realize when something has impacted your mindset. Rather than viewing weight gain or body change as negative, what positives can you see about it? Perhaps your “larger” thighs are also stronger and better adept at jumping. Maybe your increased muscle size and tone is actually improving your lines.
My own experience with weight and puberty in ballet
Before I had my final growth spurt, I went away to a summer intensive and gained weight. Going into the summer I was 5’2” and over the course of the next year I would grow to be almost 5’5”. It’s very normal to gain weight before you gain height. Girls often gain weight in thighs, breasts, and hips through puberty — and especially ahead of a growth spurt.
When I returned to my home studio after the summer away, my teacher tapped my thigh and remarked: That wasn’t there before. I had gained weight, and my thighs and butt were the main places it settled. It was muscle, but she clearly wasn’t happy with their larger size. This gave me an instant feeling of shame. I felt as if I had done something wrong. I went from being very thin to having some fat.
No one should have made me feel that anything was wrong with this physical change. It’s normal. It’s healthy. It should happen. My body was supposed to change.
Your body is also supposed to change.
Body changes through layoffs and changing dance schedules
In a dance career there is often a lot of inconsistency in training and schedules. You might have a 28-week contract with occasional 1-or-2-week layoffs. Then, of course you’ll have a longer period of time off over the summer.
Through all of that time away from the studio, the possibility of body change can be anxiety inducing. A longer summer layoff can also, realistically, lead to some body change. When you’re in a balanced place with your food relationship and body image, the layoff changes may be slight. If you feel less secure in those areas, you may experience more extreme physical shifts.
Aiming towards a balanced approach to food and your body is going to support you to feel empowered through time off. It will allow you to accept the normal physical fluctuations and to understand that it makes sense that you’d be at your fittest when you’re in your busiest dancing seasons.
What happens to your body when you retire
A dancer’s schedule is more active than an average person. It’s significantly more active than someone working a 9-5 and still more rigorous than someone working a job where they’re on their feet the whole time.
A lot of dancers go from dancing essentially from 9-5 to barely dancing at all in retirement. Sometimes you really need that time away from dance and have no desire to step into a studio for a while. You may really need it, but accepting the physical changes and the possibility of significant weight gain that come with it can still be hard.
Retirement is a massive shift in one’s life and identity. It’s the kind of change that would benefit from support, whether that comes from a licensed therapist or other support person.
Embracing change and cultivating self-love
You don’t have to view your body’s changes through a negative lens. Ask yourself consistently: what’s good about these physical changes? How are you actually being served by having some additional fat on your body? What is there to love about yourself, internally and externally, through these changes?
One of the biggest factors that will help you accept and even celebrate your body’s changes is cultivating a strong sense of self-love. Functioning from a self-loving place allows you to show up more fully and freely in your life and dancing. Developing self-love is a process that’s connected to caring for yourself and accepting your faults, mistakes, and perceived imperfections.
Support accepting body change
Whether you’re going through puberty or well beyond it, it’s possible you’d benefit from support to accept the physical changes you’re experiencing. Maybe you need help balancing your food relationship and body image in order to feel more at ease in your approach to your body. Perhaps, it’s a self-concept challenge and you need to see that you’re allowed to and supposed to change physically.
Health, nutrition, and lifestyle coaching could be exactly what you need to feel your best in your body. If you’re feeling distracted by what you see in the mirror or your confidence has eroded as your body has developed, set up a complimentary coaching consultation here. Connecting with someone who has been in your shoes and who fully understands the pressures of the ballet world could make all the difference.
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