Skinny Culture is Detrimental to Dance
For the last week or so, I’ve been wanting to write a post about the stubborn divide between what a team strength and conditioning professional would advocate for developing explosive athletic ability and what I often see from dance teachers leading “fitness classes” and even sometimes see dance medicine professionals advocate for on social media. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it until I saw a Twitter post from a physical therapist I follow(ed), who posted a “workout” for dancers.
It was the exact kind of workout we’ve all seen for many years in glossy magazines targeting white women who are afraid of bulk. None of the exercises were bad on their own, but from an athletic perspective, the combination of “sculpting bodyweight movements” amounted to nothing more than a late-90s “how to be skinny for your man” pre-influencer piece. What I imagine is a young dancer following the routine and confidently thinking they were engaged in cross training, when in fact they were caught in a windowless basement skinny culture trap.
Fitness is a weird space. I imagine there are myriad others like it, but I can’t help but think every day that it’s one of those areas of life that nearly everyone thinks they know more about than they do. It’s not very difficult to make oneself tired, or, if you’re a dance teacher leading a fitness class, make your young students feel a burn. Sweat, burn, and fatigue might feel like fitness, but they aren’t at all synonymous with training, which has a distinguishing characteristic of logic (one exercise fits in with the next), planning (one week of training fits in with the next), and adequate rest (it doesn’t interfere with a dancer’s performance).
One of the great ironies of Barre’s widespread popularization as Fitness™ is that these type of workouts, while potentially effective for casual exercisers seeking to move and have fun in a community, would be of very little benefit to actual ballet dancers seeking to improve performance and guard against injury. Yet it is the promise of the skinny, white, ballet body that is the primary selling point of the Barre marketing strategy. It is especially troubling to see people who purport to devote their careers to helping dancers traffic in skinny culture, but of course such toxicity wouldn’t persist without aiding and abetting from a broad spectrum of people. These are folks who are deeply invested in something, but it’s not the health, wellbeing, and performance of dancers.
Here are questions to ask if you’re a dancer and someone is recommending their workout to you:
How is the workout connected to the next workout we’re doing?
How is this workout targeting my individual needs as a person (first) and dancer (second)?
In what ways does this workout account for my need to recover adequately given my other responsibilities?
Most importantly—If someone says they have a one-size, general workout for you, it’s probably not the right fit for facilitating athletic performance. There is no one “workout,” but there are training days that fit into dozens of other training days. If you’ve been jumping from workout to workout, chances are you’ve never felt in your body what it means to be truly strong as an athlete—even if you’re dancing professionally.