A note to my dear friend Ballet,

When we were first introduced, I was young. Like many children, my mom had put me into ballet classes and I experienced a wisp of your world for about a year at age 5. I was too young to appreciate you at first, but luckily I was also too young to feel anything but wonder towards the girl staring back at me in the mirror, a mirror that would soon grow to cause pain and incite fear, but we’re not quite there yet. Several years later, at age 10, I started doing all types of dance and I didn’t actually like you very much. You didn’t have the parallel turns of jazz or the groovy feel of hip-hop and to my young brain, you just weren’t that interesting. Fast forward a few more years, at age 13, and you began to fascinate me. As my mind began to shift from chaotic and outgoing to distinguished and disciplined, every choice I made began to lead me back to you. I had teachers who were real ballerinas involved in real companies and I was enamored with the tales of their adventures with you: being sore from eight-hour rehearsals and dancing full length ballets as the lead, it sounded like bliss and something I was determined to experience. At my competition-based studio, I wanted to be known for being good at you. I went away for multiple summer programs, filled with rigorous, multiple-week training and your hold on me continued to strengthen. I eventually switched to a you-based studio with more classical training and that’s where I’m currently at. It may sound simple, but our relationship is far from so.

Generally, I spend all of my time trying to meet, or even attempt to top, your standards and be good enough for you. I spend hours in class, hours stretching and strengthening after class, and all of my headspace thinking about you, yet it still feels like it’s never enough. Sometimes I think it’s unfair for anything to have the sort of influence you have over me. You say jump and I jump and you tell me I’m horrible for the way I look or the shape I was born in, and I listen. The way I talk, the way I eat, the way I live—you tell me I’m wrong, and I think you’re right. I think what you say is as true as the air I struggle to breathe.

I guess I am partially at fault though, because I know I am in a sport that will probably never completely accept me or the way that I look. I know that I may never get to accomplish my life goal because of that, but I still try—I am normally awfully disappointed, but no one could say that I’ve given up on you. And you can’t say that I don’t, and haven’t tried because I’ve tried, I really have, but the years of restriction and self hatred and constantly having a distorted image of myself haven’t exactly worked well for me. You told me to be thin so I starved. You told me to have better arches so I sprained. You told me that I couldn’t call myself a dancer if I wasn’t flexible, so I spent years stretching my legs in inhumane ways—not that that part was the worst, but it certainly wasn’t the best. And after all of that, I still wasn’t good enough for you and I’m afraid I’ll never be good enough for you, but for some reason I still stay entirely devoted to you. I could never possibly imagine doing anything else with my time or in my life.

You’ve pushed harsh images into the heads of—not just me—but of every dancer, young and old. Why can’t you accept us as we are? Why can’t you accept me the way I am? I connect so deeply with you and I love you more than anything in the entirety of my sixteen-year-old life. I understand you’re competitive. I understand it’s a lot of work to make dancing look graceful and effortless and beautiful and dainty, but I just have to ask, why do you hate me? Why do you hate the way I look? And most importantly, why do I let you make me hate myself? Because a lot of the time I do, and I am working on that. I am working to try to repair what you have broken time and time again. I’m not trying to be rude or anything, but I have hated myself because of you.

I guess you could say we have somewhat of a toxic relationship. You tell me I’m not good enough and whisper proof that all of my insecurities are true, destroying my mental and physical health in a single breath. You feed me with misconceptions about everything in life, and in my life, and I hate myself because of it. You have roots like an oak tree that are buried deep into my soul and that spread into every limb of my body, into the depths of my veins, and that make up my tissues, which make up me, so I really am incapable of being rid of you. The thought of breaking free from your ice cold touch is appealing at times—I’m not gonna lie, but without you I couldn’t be me and there would simply be no point.

            Then sometimes, there are those certain moments—those moments that make everything worthwhile—the moments that are so euphoric they are basically indescribable. The moments when you finally give some of all that you take. How can you possibly make me feel so good when you can also make me feel so horrible? I land a triple pirouette and adrenaline courses through my veins at the need to do it again and again and again, and to make it even better than it was last time. I have a good day at dance and my teacher compliments me a few times and the young insecure girl within me—that is me—craves for more validation and more trust and more proof that everything she and I’ve worked for hasn’t been a total waste. Those times when I can feel and see my improvement so vividly and a sort of exorbitant happiness fills my lungs and heart and soul, and I feel so joyful my ribs could crack, and everything’s okay again—or it seems like everything is okay again—and we hug and laugh and you’re my passion and soul and you feel like home, once again. Those moments are when I remember why I dance. I dance because of that feeling.

But I also have to remember that I can do as many triple pirouettes and fouetté turns as possible and I will still never have the body type that you want me to have. This is such a screwed up game because even when we hug, you still wish you were hugging someone smaller than me—someone so gentle and breakable you could crush them in the palm of your hand. I cannot be that and I will not be that, not for you or anyone else. It has taken me hours of deep thought, journaling, and pouring my heart out onto screens and on therapists’ couches to get to a place where you can tell me to change—I won’t— because I know it’s not natural, I know it’s not healthy, and it’s not something that I could possibly ever do to myself again. I still have moments when I think you could break me, when I think you could force me into being anything but myself and blatantly ignoring all of my hopes and dreams and everything that makes me me, but you can’t and you ultimately won’t because as amazing as you are—or as amazing as I think you are—you are not enough to end me. I will no longer give you that power because you don’t deserve it. Even though you’re beautiful, graceful, and societally “perfect,” you still don’t deserve that. I give you everything that I have and you know, that really should be enough for you. Why can’t it be enough for you?

So I guess where does this leave us Ballet? I think we’ve gone over the fact that I love you and I want to be good enough for you and you want me to change, but I refuse to. So I guess all that’s left to discuss is for me to ask you to change because honestly, you’re ancient. I know it’s not your fault that you were brought up and created in a time when doctors saw starvation and drugs as perfectly healthy options for living, but Ballet that was in the 15th century and things in society have changed quite a bit. You can no longer expect the things from people and dancers that you do because they just aren’t right. You can no longer see anything above a size 2 as a disgrace because in this day and age we have started to decide that different body types are something to be celebrated. I know it may take awhile for you to change because—like all of us—you are unfortunately a creature of habit, but everyday I can see a little more leniency from you. It’s not happening very quickly at all, but I think one day when an opportunity for change approaches you, it will happen a lot faster than we all think.

I don’t expect you to apologize to me because let’s be honest, I may be insane and talking to a noun, but you are not an actual person, however you are still completely capable of development. You are thoroughly influenced by the people around you and that says a lot about you and the way that you are.

In the end, I am just a ballerina hoping that one day you will accept me and everything that I am, but until then I am not going to give up. I am going to continue to try my hardest and do my best, despite what you say. And when I become a professional I will not continue the cycle of body shaming and skinny-culture that lives within you. I am going to fight to bring it to an end and when I do, you will not be able to do anything about it, because I hope by then you will have evolved enough to crave that change as well. Even if you haven’t, you are just a noun anyways so what’s the big deal?

Lots of love (and grief),

Kaylee