"Judge my Dancing Not my Clothes"

[Image Description] 7 girls from the university of Gloucestershire performing a jazz dance at Varsity. They are wearing black leotards and hot pants with black sparkly sleeves. They are all smiling with their arms in an L formation. 

“Lean, thin, and toned.” That was the expectation for Alysha Tahim from the Dance Society at the University of Gloucestershire, and for many other dancers growing up. If you imagine a female dancer, regardless of the style, you probably don’t picture a plus-size body. But does this stop other body types from dancing? Of course not! However, because of the pressure to look a certain way, for some, this is enough to make dancers quit.

From a young age, dancers are put into tight-fitting and, in some cases, revealing costumes before performing on stage, with little to no say about what they wear. Imagine walking onto the stage in a leotard, filled with adrenaline, a mix of nerves and excitement, with every eye in the audience focused on you, as you wait for the music to start under the hot stage lights. Then, as you start dancing, your leotard begins to fall apart. In some cases, poor craftsmanship can even lead to costumes being unfit for purpose.

Alysha was just seven years old, performing in a one-shoulder leotard when the strap fell, causing her to leave the stage. This happened to other girls she was performing with as well. These kinds of experiences are just the beginning of where things can start to go wrong for dancers.

For Alysha, it was during adolescence that she started to notice the pressure to have a certain body type. “I had hit puberty, and it was very noticeable that my hips were bigger than some, and my thighs. I had one dance teacher who would call out girls for being overweight and say they weren’t fit to do ballet because their thighs were a certain size, and one of these times was when they were 8 years old.”

Alysha also compared herself to many of the girls she was dancing alongside, and with larger hips, “buying larger sizes of clothing would scare me, and because of that, I’d struggle with my body image.” This impacted Alysha’s mental health, as she didn’t look the same as everybody else, and she struggled with eating and constant self-doubt.

[Image Description] 6 girls from the university of Gloucestershire performing a ballet dance at Varsity. They are wearing red and white dresses with white tights. They are standing in a diagonal formation, all with their left arm in the air. 

For Ellie-Mae Staniforth, another member of the Dance Society, doing a speed and power sport at the same time as dance meant that, although she had a slim build, she looked different from the other girls. This meant she still felt pressure to look skinnier. Like Alysha, comments were instilled by her teacher: “You’ve still got that attitude that’s influenced by your dance teachers.” These types of comments and pressures can affect both the dancers’ performances and mental health. For Ellie-Mae, it did knock her confidence when she started to compare herself to her peers.

Even when performing, Ellie-Mae feels pressured to look a certain way, which at times has overshadowed her love for the sport. Similarly, Alysha doubted herself to the point that she almost stopped, purely because of the body standards.

Alysha believes that moving forward, promoting different body sizes would normalize different body types and make the sport more inclusive. In addition, she believes that costume designs should provide more coverage for younger dancers so that children won’t compare themselves to each other. This would create an industry where there is less pressure on dancers, allowing the focus to remain on the love of the sport.