In this episode I reflect on the experience of taking my 4 year old daughter, Maya, to her first ballet class. This was a magical, proud, and beautiful moment – definitely one for the mom books. However, it also took me down memory lane in terms of my own ballet journey as a child.
I started ballet as a way to correct my feet. I was born with a pretty severe case of “pigeon toes”. As a result, my options were either to break my legs and reset them or to start ballet super young and do the work to turn out my legs slowly.
Of course, if you know anything about ballet, turn out is key. Sadly, my body just wasn’t built this way. I did not have the bone structure to allow for good turn out. As a child ballet student, I was constantly being criticized, judged, and disciplined for my bad technique. Sadly, I did not know at the time, that none of this was my fault – it was something I could not change. My ballet teachers did not understand this either and so didn’t hold back on pointing out my flaws.
To make matters worse, I was also constantly being called out for being the “fat” kid in the class. I was in no ways an overweight child. Not by any stretch. But I never had the typical petite ballet body either. This was another thing that my ballet teacher never failed to point out to me. Let me just note here that I was between the ages of about 8 and 12. Pretty impressionable.
As I sit here in my 30s, with decades of body issues that I am still dealing with, I can’t help but wonder what role these early criticisms had on me as a child; a hurt that I still seem to be carrying today.
