This is a picture of my seventeen-year-old cousin, Brooke. She and I have danced side by side for the past fourteen years, but recently she has showed a potentially bad interest in New York’s American Ballet Theater. Whether the company admits it or not, there is a constant demand to control each members’ body weight and body fat percentage. Brooke has always been a tiny girl, but her thighs and stomach are unfortunately larger than most women in thecompany. Her life lately has revolved around strict dieting and constant measuring.
She agreed to let me take a picture of her after a four-hour intensive ballet conditioning class. After each class, she routinely measures her thighs and rib cage area to see if she has dropped any inches. As you can see, she is dressed in proper ballet attire: a black leotard, pink tights, pink split sole ballet slippers, and her hair is pulled back in a secured bun. Most seventeen-year-old girls want to let loose and have fun, but Brooke is very proper and confined at all times because she wants to live up to the typical professional prima ballerina lifestyle.
The dance world is a media of its own, and it too, just like everything else, is all about conforming to fit the norm. Brooke will strive to be the norm in order to be accepted into the American Ballet Theater, no matter what it takes. It’s troubling to think that a young girl about to graduate from high school is more concerned about her body measurements instead of school dances and enjoying her senior year. The dance media has affected her health both physically and mentally. Although everyone sees a tiny girl, in the mirror she sees her reflection as being too large to make it in the dance world. The photo itself speaks volumes due to the angle and symbols used. The photo was taken looking down on Brooke because the dance professionals she is trying to impress look down on her for the size of her body. She is looking at her reflection with a disgusted face because she is striving to be something she will probably never physically become. The empty room shows that the world around her doesn’t matter much; it’s all about getting into the company. The bright lights act as a spotlight because she feels as if all eyes are always on her.
4 comments:
This picture really shows the struggle that dancers go throught to stay thin and the pressure put on them. Girls can't help it if they have wide hips and a tiny waist, all girls are shaped differently. I like how in the picture that the girl is focused completely on the tape measure and the exact inch of her slender waist. She can see the constration of how she could possibly make it smaller, how many meals can she skip to lose the extra inch. The reflection shows the viewer how she really feels. The dance position of first position shows how truely deciated to dance she really is. Dancers tend to face many eating disorders and sometimes the eating disorders lead to death if not treated properly.
This photo shows how dance companies only contribute to eating disorders. I say this because dancers are constantly measuring their waist and weighing themselves. In a way one could say that dancer focus more on their weight then they do on their actual dancing, which only stresses the dancers out more and creates more of a problem for them, because they practice their dancing more and then forget to eat which may cause long term health risk if not eaten properly.
This is another great example about how the media somehow influences young girls in their hobbies. It shows the struggle that young girls have to go through in order to try and live up to the standard that the media has created. This standard the media has created makes it hard for young girls to enjoy their hobbies.
This pictures tells me that the media iscontrolling almost every aspect of our lives. Here you have a teenage girl, that is very fit and thin and still feels the pressures to lose more weight. The tape measurer arund her waist is disheartening because in reality, most of us would love to look like her. Yet she is unhappy with herself because of what society says she shoul look like i order to be a dancer.
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