Searching for the perfect body.....................

My investigation of what research literature says about the psychological well-being of dancers and body imagery began a few weeks ago. My purpose was to discover recurring themes, which will provide guidance and evidence for what topics my inquiry question will examine.

My line of inquiry is essentially, “Can improved health education for dancers make a positive change to the body culture and lifestyles of female dancers?”

Using words such as “body image”, “dancer”, “psychology”,  "females" in the search engines  I found articles in a variety of academic journals: Journal of Dance Education, Research in Dance Education, Journal of Dance Medicine and Science, Dance Research Journal, Medical Problems of Performing Artists, Journal of Sport Behaviour, and Research in Sports Medicine. While reading articles from these academic journals, I kept a list of themes explored in those articles. It has taken me several weeks to actually read and digest the findings of all those articles.

Here are the themes that repeated most frequently:

ANXIETY. BODY IMAGE. DEPRESSION. EATING DISORDERS. INJURY. MALADAPTIVE PERFECTIONISM. MIRRORS. PERFORMANCE. PSYCHOLOGY. SELF. STRESS.

All the research indicates that self-image is inextricably linked to body image, especially for young females and in particular in activities such as dance, athletics, gymnasts etc as these are body centred. All the articles describe and explain the convoluted issues that many women and most girls battle in adolescence, including the ability to conform to a media-driven ideal of beauty. What is clear from the previous research conducted in this subject is that mass media and the prevailing culture’s views are an ever-pervasive influence on body image and self-esteem. Often we blindly accept the images and messages that the media gives us.

This blog discusses some of the issues researched in those articles as I absorb as much background information as I can to inform my inquiry question. I think if I can understand why the dance industry puts such demands upon the dancer to have a certain body aesthetic then I can begin to try and understand what is required of us as dance practitioners to change things for the future and promote healthy dancers.

Most articles that I found discuss the negative side of media influence on body imagery. It is interesting to start by understanding how we have come to this current position through history to the acceptable standards of modern day body image in women.............................

The idealization of slenderness in women is often viewed as the product of an historical evolution that has occurred over the past century. Within Western industrialized cultures, there have been many changes over the years in the body shape and size that is considered attractive and healthy, especially for women. It is possible to trace a cultural change in the ideal body from the voluptuous figures favoured from the Middle Ages to the turn of the twentieth century, to the thin body types favoured today.

Historically, the westernized image of the perfect body has changed dramatically, especially with regard to females. Over the past century different body images have been projected by western culture and promoted as standards for fashion and sophistication.

The era                                                             The look
1890s                                            Plump, voluptuous
Early 20^th century                                  Corseted, hour-glass
                        1920s                                     Flat-chested, slim-hipped, androgynous
                 1930s and 1940s                          Full-bodied, with emphasis on legs
        1950s                                              Voluptuous and curvaceous
              1960s to date                                Thin, un-curvaceous (waif-look)

Slimness is seen as a desirable attribute for women in prosperous Western cultures, and is associated with self-control, elegance, social attractiveness, and youth. The ideal female shape is epitomized in the "impossible, tall, thin and busty Barbie-doll stereotype”.

Slimness came to exemplify unconventionality, freedom, youthfulness, and a ticket to the “Jet-Set” life in 1960s Britain, and was adopted as the ideal by women of all social classes. Miss America winners were slimmer and taller in the 1960s than in the previous decade, with an increase of about an inch in height and a weight loss of about 5 lb by 1969. This trend occurred across Europe and the USA. Studies of the portrayal of the female body in the media have reliably found that models became thinner and thinner between the 1960s and 1980s.

Very little has changed in the last forty years. Since the 1960’s, idealized models of beauty such as waif-like women have been  in movies, magazines, television, and the cosmetic and fashion industries. As one article points out, "while beautiful women are slimmer, average women are heavier than they were in the 1950s. Thus the discrepancy between the real and ideal is greater. This discrepancy creates our plague of eating disorders". Girls are trying to achieve impossible beauty standards that are produced through much media trickery - photo cropping, airbrushing, composite bodies, and body doubles. This ideal is achieved by a representative few (Body Shop, 1997), "There are 3 billion women who don't look like supermodels and only 8 who do".

The cultural idea of what is beautiful has changed over the years. In the 1950s, Marilyn Monroe, who wore a size 16 at one point in her career, was considered the epitome of sexiness and beauty. Contrast this with more recent examples such as Courtney Cox and Jennifer Aniston from the television show Friends, who are considered beautiful. They wear a size 2 . While models and celebrities have become thinner, the average woman is heavier today. This makes an even larger difference between the real and the ideal.

Like the rest of society, dancers’ appearances have also changed over the years. In the 1930s and 1940s, ballerinas were considered thin at the time but, as can be seen in photographs, looked very healthy. These dancers were definitely thin, but they looked healthy. They had breasts, hips, and curves, and actually looked womanly. Since dancers have generally been slimmer than ideal, these dancers becoming even thinner for today’s ideal is a problem. As one renowned ballet teacher saidt: “It is a reflection of society, everything has become more streamlined” (Benn & Walters, 2001).

The research already available shows that whilst over the past four  decades the prevalence of eating disorders in western culture has doubled, during the same period, mass media has increasingly progressed thinner representations of the female body. This trend for thinness as a standard of beauty became even more marked in the 1990s than it had been in the 1980s. In the 1980s, models were slim and looked physically fit, with lithe, toned bodies. Time magazine, in August 1982, argued that the new ideal of beauty was slim and strong, citing Jane Fonda and Victoria Principal as examples of the new ideal of beauty. In Britain and the USA, the slim, toned figure of Jerry Hall epitomized this ideal.

The 1990s saw a departure from this trend with the emergence of “waif” models with very thin body types, perhaps the most famous of these being Kate Moss who has a similar body shape to Twiggy from the 1960s.

The late 1990s saw the rise of “heroin chic”; that is, fashion houses made very thin models up to look like stereotypical heroin users, with black eye make-up, blue lips, and matted hair.

In a Newsweek article of August 1996, Zoe Fleischauer, a model who was recovering from heroin addiction, told the interviewer that models are encouraged to look thin and exhausted: "They [the fashion industry] wanted models that looked like junkies.
The more skinny and f——ed up you look, the more everyone thinks you’re fabulous".

In the late 1990s, the model Emma Balfour publicly condemned the fashion industry for encouraging young models to take stimulants to stay thin, and for ignoring signs of heroin addiction and US President Clinton denounced “heroin chic” in the wake of fashion photographer Davide Sorrenti’s death from a heroin overdose.

In 2000, the Women’s Unit of the British Labour government were so concerned about the potential effects on young women’s health of representations of magazine and other media images of “waif” models that they convened a meeting to discuss the potential links between eating problems and these media images. This Body Summit prompted a flurry of articles discussing the potential link between thin images and young women’s body image and eating, most of which suggested that magazines and newspapers needed to review their practices.

However, irrespective of this moral panic in the early 2000s, the extremely thin Western ideal has been maintained. In addition, digital modification of images in magazines now means that virtually every fashion image is digitally modified.


Body image is defined as the way in which people see themselves in the mirror everyday: the values, judgments, and ideas that they attach to their appearance. (Benn and Walters, 2001) argue that these judgments and ideas come from being socialized into particular ways of thinking, mainly from society’s ideas of what beauty is, shown especially in the current media and consumer culture.
The average person is inundated with 3,000 advertisements daily (Kilbourne, 2002). In these advertisements, women are shown in little clothing and in stereotypical roles. These women are not real (Kilbourne, 2002). They have been altered by computer airbrushing, retouching, and enhancing, and in many cases, several women are used to portray the same model (Kilbourne, 2002).



Susan Bordo (2003) notes that digital modification of images means that we are being educated to shift our perception of what a normal woman’s body looks like, so that we see our own bodies as wanting because they do not match an unrealistic, polished, slimmed, and smoothed ideal:

" These images are teaching us how to see filtered, smoothed, polished, softened, sharpened, rearranged. Digital creations, visual cyborgs, teaching us what to expect from flesh and blood".

Overwhelmingly the articles I researched agreed that

the social pressure to conform to the slender ideal is greater on women than on men

many women in Western societies are dissatisfied with their bodies, particularly their stomach, hips, and thighs

 most women would choose to be thinner than they currently are and tend to overestimate the size of key body sites, irrespective of current size

questionnaires and interviews have found a similar pattern of dissatisfaction in British, Canadian, US, and Australian women

 feminist approaches to understanding women’s dissatisfaction suggest that social pressure on women to strive for the slender, toned body shape that is associated with youth, control, and success encourages the objectification of the body and the disproportionate allocation of energies to body maintenance.

Through the ages, women have undergone pain to attempt to conform to the current ideal. This is evident in relation to practices such as foot binding and the wearing of restrictive corsets, whereby women suffered discomfort and immobility in the name of particular fashions. In Western society today, we have replaced these practices with strict diets (which can weaken and debilitate and manifest in eating disorders and ill health) and cosmetic surgery (in which women undergo painful and potentially dangerous procedures) to try to attain culturally defined, attractive, slender body shapes.

Dance and fashion have much in common. Both are body-centred. Both involve performance, display and self-expression. They also share an obsession with weight and body-image.

"Since the cultural revolution of the 1960s, female dancers and fashion models have presented near-identical symptoms of damage, with failure to live up to extreme physical ideals resulting in drug and medication abuse, mental health problems and even death from starvation. Three models (Eliana Ramos, Luisel Ramos and Ana Caroline Reston) have all died as a result of eating disorders and Allegra Versace, 20-year-old fashion-student daughter of designer Donatella Versace, revealed  she had been struggling with anorexia 'for many years'", one article reports. Many dancers only "fess up" to eating disorders when they retire from performing as it is still viewed as a form of weakness.

Almost everyone credits George Balanchine, the renowned dancer, teacher, and choreographer, with the current aesthetic of ballet in the West, referred to by most as the “Balanchine body,” or the “anorexic look” (Gordon, 1983). He has promoted the skeletal look by his costume requirements and his hiring practices, as well as the treatment of his dancers (Gordon, 1983). The ballet aesthetic currently consists of long limbs, and a skeletal frame, which accentuates the collarbones and length of the neck, as well as absence of breasts and hips (Gordon, 1983, Benn & Walter, 2001, Kirkland, 1986). Balanchine was known to throw out comments to his dancers, such as: “eat nothing” and “must see the bones” (Kirkland, 1986, p.56).

If Balanchine  created this aesthetic, other choreographers have followed and adopted it as the norm. Mikhail Baryshinikov, star dancer and former director of American Ballet Theatre, did not tolerate any body type but the Balanchine one (Gordon, 1983). During rehearsal and without any warning, he fired a corps de ballet member because she was too “fat” in his opinion (Gordon, 1983). He said that he “couldn’t stand to see her onstage anymore” (Gordon, 1983, p.150). Fortunately, management intervened and the dancer was rehired. However, Baryshinikov and the rest of his management were known to have had meetings with their dancers in order to emphasize the importance of weight loss (Gordon, 1983). Obviously, dancers need to be fit and trim in order to be successful in their occupation, and no one should argue that staying fit is not helpful in order to see a dancer’s body line; however, it is the extreme skeletal goal that is cause for so much concern.

 

 Through this latest research I think I can now see where the trends come from historically and how this impacts onto the dance industry through the fashion and film industry.  The difference for a dancer from typical media and society pressure to be skinny is that  being thin is a requirement to pursue their careers. Just as musicians have their instruments, dancers have their bodies. Because of the constant focus on the body, body concerns are extremely common among female dancers. For non - dancers, body image problems may not be as severe because they are not required to wear skin-tight leotards and tights everyday and to stare at their bodies in the mirror for extended periods of time.

How do all of those themes interact with one another to create a healthy or unhealthy mental state for a dancer?
How do those themes relate to one another?
 Is there an overarching theme that intertwines them all? And how does this affect the dancer and how they justify their reasons for obsession with body image?

 The next step in my research is to answer that latter question through analysis of my latest questionnaire results and the current research I have conducted.

And, of course, answering one question leads to further questions.
What is the overall theme that I need to explore?
What does the existing academic research say about that theme?
What is lacking in the existing research and thus needs to be explored further through new research?

As I answer those questions, I will continue blogging about what I find.

References:

http://www.wesleyan.edu/psyc/mindmatters/volume01/article05.pdf

Body Image - Understanding Body Dissatisfaction in Men, Women, and Children  - Sarah Grogan

http://www.usask.ca/education/coursework/802papers/naigle/index.htm

http://people.ucalgary.ca/~egallery/volume2/small.html

Benn, T., & Walters, D. (2001). Between Scylla and Charybdis. Nutritional education versus body culture and the ballet aesthetic: the effects on the lives of female dancers. Research in Dance Education, 2 (2), 139-154.

Kilbourne, J. (2002). The naked truth: Advertising’s image of women. Presentation to Principial College (Elsah, IL). 14 February, 2002.

Kirkland, G. (1986). Dancing on my grave. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company.

Gordon, S. (1983). Off balance: The real world of ballet. New York: Pantheon.

One sugar plum too many ………

Whilst researching and reviewing literature to inform my inquiry I found further articles discussions and debate in relation to the movie ‘The Black Swan’ which had been the inspiration for my blog entry of February 2011, "Questions, questions and more questions…….." where I discussed an article by Arlene Phillips following the release of the movie and I felt the urge to blog about some of the related issues again as once more these articles raised issues in relation to body image, eating disorders and the dancer as they are relevant to how peer and media pressure influence the dance industry and the expected body image of dancers in a media fuelled society.

              Pretty ugly?!

It is interesting that one of the articles entitled “Pretty Ugly: Black Swan Actresses Snag Praise for their skeletal bodies !” opens with the question:
"Would this flick have been unrealistic had the actresses been allowed to maintain their already svelte figures?"

http://www.ivillage.com/black-swan-actresses-receive-praise-their-skeletal-bodies/4-a-305978

“Two girls make a pact to lose weight. Each desperately wants to get under 100 pounds and over the course of a year through hours of exercise and severe diet they finally reach their goal. With visible chest bones and protruding hips, they are proud of themselves but how does the world react to them? Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman are now being rewarded with fame, fortune and talk of a possible Oscar for their portrayal of troubled ballerinas in the movie, ‘Black Swan’”.


Portman and Kunis are praised for their “dedication” and “strength” in what for many others is a disease and a weakness.
Would their acting have been less real without the dieting?

Does it make a difference if someone practices disordered eating for a creative pursuit instead of just to get thin?
For example: Renee Zellwegers increased weight to play the role of Bridget Jones. Or even more controversial a question – why didn’t casting directors pick an actress who was already the right proportions naturally for the role?

How far will a performer go to land the desired role? If it is to such extremes doesn’t this give out the wrong message as dancers compete for roles and places in companies and colleges and feel the pressures to conform to those standards?

What message does this give to dancers about their body image and what influence does it have on dancers in general as the industry expects a certain look?


Natalie Portman  observed that working out 8 hours a day, 6 days a week and eating only carrots and almonds to drop the 20 pounds required was tough,  saying, "It is a ballet dancer's life, where you don't drink, you don't go out with your friends, you don't have much food, you are constantly putting your body through extreme pain and then you get that sort of understanding of the self-flagellation of a ballet dancer" On one hand she says that she knows "the whole thing? I'm aware that it's sick" but then she adds that she feels like she was in "the best shape of her life" for the role.  Kunis, who got equally thin, says she was very impressed with how her "skin-and-bones appearance" looked on film.

Surely the Oscar nominations for both actresses (Portman actually won the prize for best actress) are, or should be, for their acting ability and skills but the way it is linked to their dedication and strength to lose drastic weight for the role in the media gives a false message that they are actually being praised and rewarded for their weight loss. What affect does this have in boosting women’s self-confidence and image and in particular from my inquiry point of view that of the female dancer? The psychological effect is that with all the pressures from your peers you think what is good for them is good for me. For most dancers they are not overweight to start with just not painfully thin.

http://www.thegreatfitnessexperiment.com/2010/12/actresses-get-oscar-buzz-for-eating.html

Actresses Get Oscar Buzz For Eating Disorders while a real ballerina gets called "fat".

At the same time as Portman and Kunis were being praised for their weight loss a real ballerina was being called “fat”    ……………………………………   critic Alastair Macaulay wrote in the New York Times (1/12/2010) after he attended a performance of The Nutcracker by the New York City Ballet…………“Jenifer Ringer, as the Sugar Plum Fairy, looked as if she’d eaten one sugar plum too many”.

The article caused much controversy and outcry as Ringer suffered herself as a young dancer with an eating disorder. In response she says, “the comment hurt initially but is just part of being a professional in a field that demands perfection from those who work in it. As a dancer, I do put myself out there to be criticized, and my body is part of my art form. At the same time, I am not overweight.”

If anyone checks out the web site and photograph of Ringland you can see she is still ultra slim by any normal standards. 

In defence of his comment Macaulay retorts, “Some have argued that the body in ballet is “irrelevant.” Sorry, but the opposite is true. If you want to make your appearance irrelevant to criticism, do not choose ballet as a career. The body in ballet becomes a subject of the keenest observation and the most intense discussion. I am severe — but ballet, as dancers know, is more so”.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/40639920/ns/today-today_people/t/im-not-fat-says-ballerina-faulted-too-many-sugarplums/

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/04/arts/dance/04ballet.html?scp=1&sq=Alastair%20Macaulay&st=cse

Isn’t this distorted body image pressurising dancers to be thin?

This type of culture and media pressure increases the chance of young women developing problems with body image issues and eating disorders. It seems to me the painfully thin image of ballerina’s as portrayed in the ‘Black Swan’ could well be detrimental to the ‘normal’ dancer’s body image.

One reaction to the article was from a spokeswoman for charity ‘Beat’ Mary George said: “Dancers are under a great deal of pressure and their bodies exposed to punishing regimes and it is widely acknowledged that eating disorders are not uncommon in that world. How sad that someone who has courageously talked about and overcome her past problems with eating should be needlessly criticised in this way.”

What is worrying from reading all these articles is the acceptance of the ‘victims’ and that is why I think young female dancers are so influenced in a negative way. If a prima ballerina in the twilight of her career (Jenifer Ringland) accepts that her body is there on public show to be criticised as her profession demands perfection and prolific actresses such as Portman and Kunis are prepared to almost starve themselves to death for a role in a film what message does that give to those of us just embarking on a career in the industry.  It can push dancers to their physical limit and increase the risk for body image issues and eating disorders and injury as hopefuls try to emulate those already successful in the industry. If we cannot look to those practitioners who are already successful in the industry to change attitudes, who can we look to, to change them or do we just accept and conform?

Plus size model retouched to look thinner

Another interesting article with regard to how the media distorts and influences what we see and read was an article by model Crystal Renn who has become the poster woman for curvy girls everywhere. As a teen model, Renn, now 24, tried so hard to get down to the size 0 designers wanted that she developed bulimia and anorexia. So when Renn saw the published results of a recent photo shoot she did for charity ‘Fashion for Passion’ in which her body was whittled down via retouching, her reaction was vehement. She said she could barely recognize her full-figured self in the slimmed-down shots. As a size 12 she said she was made to look like a size 2.

“I absolutely understand a reasonable amount of retouching, but to change my body completely, that is not what I’m about and that’s not my message, and that’s so important to me. Mostly people felt a sense of betrayal before they knew that the pictures had been retouched. I think women have so few role models to look up to that they felt  that I  clearly think I  need to do this [lose weight] to be beautiful and so  I’m going to have to do that, too. I don’t want women to think that I think thin is the only way to be beautiful,” Renn said. “Beauty is not a pants size. I think it’s about what I have to say and how I live my life, which is in a healthy way, I believe, for me and I want them to know I’m healthy and happy with who and how I am”

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/38358777/ns/today-style/t/plus-size-model-shocked-being-made-look-thinner/

Results of a survey of young teenage girls found just eight per cent of 14-year-old girls were happy with their bodies. Seven out of 10 said they would be 100 per cent happier if they could lose half a stone and four in 10 had considered plastic surgery. Two thirds of the 2,000 girls blamed celebrities with "perfect bodies" and boys for their negative body image.
Girlguiding UK found similar results in their poll. In a study of 3,200 young women, more than half said the media made them feel that "being pretty and thin" was the "most important thing". The most influential role models by far, cited by 95 per cent of girls, were Kate Moss and Victoria Beckham.

As females we all want to look good. There's nothing wrong with that. But when it is taken to extremes, you get the unattainable. Girls are at risk of developing a distorted idea of body image, so we get the size zero debate. There are young girls wanting cosmetic surgery and various enhancements. As a dancer in a profession where your body is on show and is the main tool of your trade the risks are much higher.

Later this week I am taking workshops at a South Yorkshire high school with different ages and abilities in performing arts students and  I think I will seek the views of the year 11 girls Contemporary Dance group to see if their answers support or contradict my research so far.

I would love to hear anyones views, opinions or personal experiences on any of the issues raised in this blog.

References

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/40639920/ns/today-today_people/t/im-not-fat-says-ballerina-faulted-too-many-sugarplums/
http://www.thegreatfitnessexperiment.com/2010/12/actresses-get-oscar-buzz-for-eating.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/04/arts/dance/04ballet.html?scp=1&sq=Alastair%20Macaulay&st=cse

Blog entry February 2011 Emily Rose Harris – “Questions, questions and more questions!” http://emilyrose91.blogspot.com/2011_02_01_archive.html

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/38358777/ns/today-style/t/plus-size-model-shocked-being-made-look-thinner

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Survey Link......


Please take a few minutes to fill out my survey! 


http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/B86ZFWV

Module 3………………………. It’s all a bit GAGA

but baby I was born this way !?

I arrived home from Greece 2 weeks ago after having a fantastic time for the last 6 months doing a dancing/singing contract. Since being back as well as catching up on sleeping, having a hot, bubbly bath and eating home cooking I have been doing a lot of research, reading and planning towards my 3^rd and final module!

Having been Lady Gaga for 6 months as part of a tribute show I do feel a bit “gaga” trying to get my head around everything again. One thing I did realise whilst living in Greece  -  it wasn’t easy to always find internet connection to complete the end of Module 2 and I had a few technical issues and last minute panics. Therefore I want to try and get ahead with this module in between contracts as I disappear again to Lapland soon for a Christmas contract and then who knows where so I need to try and make a plan of how I am going to tackle Module 3 so I don’t experience the same panic if the deadline date looms and I’m somewhere off the radar again. 

My first task was to review my feedback from Adesola, I realised that my question of inquiry is too broad. I have opened so many routes and asked so many questions that it is going to be hard to answer all my questions in time and with enough detail.

I had so much research for Module 2 that I have already answered some of my inquiry and this will not leave me much investigation throughout this final module.

The options Adesola gave me were:

• What narratives do people tell themselves in order to justify their 
  health /eating habits?
• How have these narratives been affected by teachers and peers?
• Have these narratives changed at any point in their career?

These will give me a specific inquiry instead of a more general one as the area I want to research centres around how female dancers can influence change within the industry to focus less on body image and why and how we are influenced in the way we perceive the image of the dancer.

I have also decided I need to use a more specific piece of literature for my review too so that I can get more detailed research which will help me answer my inquiry but also help with the review itself. This is mainly what I have been doing since I was last in the BAPP arena -  reading and researching articles  -  there is so much helpful literature to read.

I am currently working on a survey which is more specific to these new ideas and questions.  I need detailed questions and not just general ones. This is to help me formulate the answers I need to write a good final piece on my inquiry question. I also want to make a detailed list of which practitioners I am going to use and how I will collect and collate my findings. 

I really appreciated Adesola’s feedback and it has really helped me understand exactly what I need to focus on this next module. I do have a tendency for going off at tangents and need to keep things under control to focus specifically on my one question. My excuse is it’s such a fascinating subject that I feel very passionately about and with the observations I made and some of my work experiences during my summer contract even more  relevant to me, I feel, in my professional practice. Although I had little time to do much else I did make some interesting observations and entries in my journal and I’m sure some of the ‘Corfu Collection’ will appear in my articles before very long!!

I’ve also been researching relevant articles and reading up on my chosen topic so I’m sure I can feel some blog entries looming for discussion and opinions on body image issues with my fellow BAPPers.

As part of my review of where I am to date and a constructive look at my feedback I have also made a plan and timetable which I can review and update as I go along but that has realistic timescales that I can achieve and will keep me on course and will help me evaluate where I am in BAPP terms (not geographically of course).

This first blog was sparked by a discussion I had with my boyfriend about how media and magazines brainwash women into believing that 'if you are not stick thin you are unworthy, unloved and unsuccessful'. How does the media influence how we think and feel we should look? 

Whilst reading my Cosmo, he asked me, 'why do you read those magazines?' I answered, 'because I like looking at the fashion and beauty tip pages'. His opinion was that such magazines teach women that everything is wrong with themselves and their lives - that they don't have the right hair, right body, and right clothes so why would you read something that strips you apart and destroys your self-esteem. 

Afterwards I thought this would make a good blog entry as this has a lot to do with my inquiry so I decided to do some research and look at some articles on the internet which discuss how the media is brainwashing us into a false sense of hope and direction when really we should be proud of the individual person that we are. Can you imagine a world where everyone looked exactly the same? 

Women constantly struggle with body image. We are concerned about our weight, about whether our size and shape is acceptable to others, failing to accept ourselves and, too often, this can result in struggling with an eating disorder. If we are at all like the vast majority of women, we expend a great deal of energy comparing ourselves unfavourably with what our culture says our size and shape "should" be. After all, it's pretty hard to feel okay about your body if you're a size 14 when size 12 is considered a "large" size—although 70% of women wear size 12 and up. This is not to diminish the reality that obesity is a major health risk in our society. We're not even talking gross over-weight here. It's just the reality vs. our mass fantasy. Therefore, it's no wonder so many women are obsessed and often depressed about their bodies.

This is especially hard for female dancers.  Everyone knows that dancers strive for an ideal look: tall(ish), lean, toned (but not obscenely muscular), strong, and stable. Yet among all of this, you're expected to be delicate and graceful or angular and hard-hitting, depending on what you're being asked to do. Impossible? Probably! How do we improve our body image and prevent or combat “imagined ugliness" when we can't reach the "perfect body" as it is perceived by society?

It made me happy and somewhat relieved that whilst I was researching I found so many articles where women were trying to erase this 'perfect' image from the media and many Hollywood actresses are "coming out" about their eating disorders which I think confirms that the "desired look" is not achieved naturally in many cases and many models, dancers, actresses do risk their health to try and conform to these unrealistic demands of the industry.

One such Hollywood name is Lisa Ann Walter who starred in films such as The Parent Trap, Shall we Dance and Killers;
      extract from her web site.....................

                "Is it any shock that the creator and executive producer of Oxygen's Dance Your Ass Off attended her first Weight Watchers meeting at 12, struggled with bulimia throughout college and spent decades submerging herself in crazy workout regimes and weight loss schemes to nab roles in films such as The Parent Trap, Shall We Dance and Killers? The insanity doesn't end there: comedian Lisa Ann Walter, 46, has had a nose job and boob job(s), used Botox, Restylane and Juvederm, had chemical peels and succumbed to laser cellulite treatments (though she thankfully draws the line at labia reduction). All this, done in an effort to ditch what she calls "the American woman's birthright to obsess over every tiny thing that I think is wrong with me."

In her book "The Best Thing About My Ass Is That It's Behind Me", the mother of four chronicles her bumpy, cellulite-packed ride from Hollywood's Size 0 ideal to unabashed acceptance.
The books flap lures readers in:
"Learn how she went from body dysmorphic to sassy-asstastic in only 25 short years of dieting, thousands of dollars in 'procedures'... and one pair of industrial-strength Spanx."

However many are still influenced and magazines choosing to use cover models who look like they are 6 feet tall and weigh 90 lbs, have perfect skin and hair are still the norm. Are we caught in the web of unrealistic expectations of what is beautiful? In today's media dominated society, it can be very easy to get caught up with your imperfections. We are continually bombarded with ridiculous body images imposed on women by the media, fashion industry, and Hollywood.

I found that a recent survey in 'People's Magazine' which featured an article titled "Searching for the Perfect Body". The article includes a poll of women, asking how many are influenced by the unrealistically thin images of Hollywood women today. Not surprisingly, 80% of those polled admitted that the images of women on TV, in movies, and in magazines contribute to insecurities about their own body image. So insecure in fact, that, according to the People poll, that 93% have tried to lose weight, 34% have had or would consider cosmetic surgery, and 34% said they would be willing to try a diet even if it posed a slight health risk. Fortunately, it was pleasing to read that most of the women polled were wising up!


 

I believe that women should embrace the attributes and assets they have been born with and just accept ourselves for who we are. I was discussing this subject with an ex dance friend of mine and we were discussing a college where we have mutual friends and she told me that, "if you're not anorexic, bulimic or doing drugs then you don't fit in!!!!!" How shocking is that?? A college where having an eating disorder is the norm rather than the exception. This friend had given up her hopes of a career in dance and become a solicitor as she was "sick and tired" of trying to get the perfect body to meet the requirements of the dance world and decided to accept her more curvy natural figure and stop the constant diets and sacrifices to try and achieve an unrealistic goal. Sad. I remember her from the festivals of my childhood and she made the finals of the Miss Dance of Great Britain Competition!!

Problems with body size and shape have been around in the dance and entertainment field for many years. Iconic women of ballet such as Margot Fonteyn, Anna Pavlova and Moira Sheara to name a few would not get on in the ballet/dance industry of today. If you look at their photographs they were still slim but had normal shape.

Isn't it about time that this image was challenged and dancers were chosen on talent rather than just on their body statistics? I remember auditioning for Royal Ballet as an associate dancer at the age of 13, the application form asked for my mother and father's weight, height and other statistics and it even went down to my Grandparents too and this was for them to decide whether I would have the suitable body type to be a ballerina! It didn't matter how well I performed I had been cut within the first 5 minutes when I walked in the room whilst they stood us in lines of 4 or 5 and circled us individually. How demoralising is that for a young teenager who has dreams of performing?

At one audition I attended for vocational training, we were all weighed before we auditioned and the principal told us , "I am looking for marketable products!"

It pains me so much that how you are perceived on the outside dictates whether you are correct for a casting or role? This week a leaflet advertising Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers' "Top Hat" has been adapted for the stage and is to have a 'soap' TV star who just happened to win Strictly Come Dancing playing the lead role which was immortalised by Fred Astaire. This is the influence the media is inflicting upon the performance industry which leaves trained performers disheartened and deflated.

The media is slowly taking over every aspect of our lives, crushing people's confidence and self-esteem, turning everything and everyone into marketable products. We as female dancers need to rebel against these images that are constantly created and promote our own individuality and uniqueness, a realism for the modern world and the future which will hopefully inspire and reform the industry.

Another article I reviewed suggested that parents who were worried about their daughters and eating disorders should discourage them from reading glossy magazines that portray underweight women as glamorous which is the very point my boyfriend was trying to make to me. He has actually contributed to me feeling better about my body image as he loves my body as it is and I do feel more confident about my body now than I ever have.

Emma Healey, the operations director at Beat, an eating disorder charity, said in one article I reviewd;  "The contradictory messages going out are hugely confusing  - where on one page of a magazine there's a bikini diet and on the other an article about how to feel good about yourself.
At the heart of eating disorders lies low self-esteem. Continually being measured against some kind of bizarre 'gold standard' that we see in magazines and on television, is damaging."

Veteran actress, Helen Mirren joined the attack on the use of "horrifically thin" young models in the fashion industry, saying it is jeopardising the health of teenage girls when she introduced her 6ft young niece to modelling agencies who all rejected her telling her she needed to lose weight in order to meet the aesthetic demands of the industry.
"I blame my own sex vehemently on this," she says. ''It is women who run the magazines and women who editorialise and women who make the decisions. A lot of the girls are horrifically thin and of course they have a problem. Mostly, the industry chooses to turn a blind eye". 

Various authors have concluded that print media, particularly magazines aimed at young women, have powerful effects on their readers, serving to foster and maintain a "cult of femininity" and supplying definitions of what it means to be an attractive woman.
Women’s magazines are read by a large proportion of women (about half the adult female population of the UK) with each copy seen by many women (on average, each copy of Vogue is read by 16 women in Britain, since magazines are often shared among friends and are widely available in the waiting rooms of doctors, dentists, and hairdressers.

We live in a world of stick thin models and emaciated celebrities. Magazine covers show articles such as; "Best and Worst Beach Bodies" and "Too Fat for TV", were two I noted this week. Weekly tabloids feature stories on who has lost the most weight and who needs to cover up. Television ads celebrate the greatness of diet pills; energy drinks can speed up your metabolism, and the newest diet that will help you lose ten pounds in two days. The idea that 'thin is in'  is everywhere, and is hardly escapable from the advertising industry. And although the messages are damaging and often untrue, women suffer the consequences of constant exposure to overly thin models and movie stars. Dancers are no different in that exposure and the pressures from society but they also face added pressures that they will not be selected for a role or job if they do not meet the ideal. 

In the 1980s, Marjorie Ferguson (1985) used content analysis to study a random
selection of copies of Woman’s Own, Woman, and Woman’s Weekly between 1949 and 1974, and 1979 and 1980, looking for dominant themes, goals, and roles.
She also interviewed 34 female magazine editors about their roles, beliefs, and professional practices, and about how they perceived the impact of social change upon their magazines and audiences; and 97 journalists, artists, publishers, and managers about
their perceptions of the editorial process, publishing organizations, and the market context of women’s periodical production. She interpreted her data in relation to the writings of Durkheim on the sociology of religion. She argued that there are interesting parallels between
the practices promoted by women’s magazines and the characteristic elements of the religious cult:
"I have argued that women’s magazines collectively comprise a social institution which serves to foster and maintain a cult of femininity. In promoting a cult of femininity these journals are not merely reflecting the female role in society; they are also supplying one."


These ads do not encourage women to embrace their own shapes, but rather to work hard to attain a low weight and toned body. There are a few ads that try to honor ‘normal’ looking women—the most notable was Dove’s  ad campaign in 2009 that featured everyday women in their underwear. But there is no way that after seeing skinny models over and over again, one company can really make a difference in how women feel about their bodies. More needs to be done to cancel out the hundreds of ads women see everyday that basically tell them they are not good enough and do not meet the required standard.

Because diet products (a market that brings in billions of £'s annually), slimming clothes and magazines touting weight loss are so prevalent in our society, young girls and women have little chance of escaping messages that promote a negative body image.

More and more horrific facts come up when you research the effects of overly thin models in advertising. According to Healthyplace.com, over 80 percent of 10-year-old girls have dieted,and currently, 50 percent of women are presently dieting in America. Women everywhere are exhibiting signs of hatred towards their body, continually fueled by being exposed to ads featuring bodies they can never obtain.

Young women are extremely vulnerable to developing eating disorders—millions are suffering from illnesses like anorexia or bulimia, and their quest for the thinnest bodies are only furthered by ads with 90-pound models. The hardest part is that these ads are everywhere—even if women avoided magazine ads, the message to be thin is broadcast on television, radio, the Internet, and outdoor billboards.

While the fashion industry has taken minimal steps in using healthy models, not much action has actually taken place. Overly thin models were banned from catwalks in Brazil in 2006, but the outrage that took place from models that are ‘naturally thin’ dissuaded many designers from featuring healthier models in their shows. The United States has tried to encourage the industry to use plus size models (usually the still-thin size 4 or 6) or average looking women; however, there still hasn’t been much of a change. Magazines like Vogue and Elle have tried to showcase healthy models, but no matter how many stories they do about wanting to change negative body image, the ads that run alongside the articles still display extremely gaunt models.
The web site I researched states; "Because this is a billion-dollar industry, change would most likely be a long time in coming, but it is a necessary change that our culture needs to go through…women’s lives are at stake".

Here are some disturbing facts and figures I found during my research:

Youth facts and figures (taken from the Council on Size & Weight Discrimination, website, www.cswd.org )           

          1)    42% of first, second and third grade girls want to lose weight.
[Collins, M. "Body figure perception and preferences among preadolescent children." International Journal of Eating Disorders 10 (1991), pp 199-208.]

            2)      45% of boys and girls in grades three through six want to be thinner; 37% have already dieted; 7% score in the eating disorder range on a test of children's eating habits.
[Maloney, MJ, McGuire, J. Daniels, Sr., and Specker, B. "Dieting behavior and eating attitudes in children," Pediatrics 84 (1989) pp 482-487.]

             3)      46% of nine- to eleven-year-olds say they are sometimes or very often on diets.
[Gustafson-Larson, A. M., and Terry, R. D., "Weight-related behaviors and concerns of fourth grade children." Journal of the American Dietetic Assoc. 92 (7)(1992), pp 818-822.]

              4)    70% of normal weight girls in high school feel fat and are on a diet.
[Ferron, "Body Image in adolescence in cross-cultural research" Adolescence 32 (1997), pp. 735-745.]


               5)      Over half of the females age 18-25 studied would prefer to be run over by a truck than to be fat, and two-thirds would choose to be mean or stupid rather than fat.
[Gaesser, Glenn A., PhD. Big Fat Lies: The truth about your weight and your health. Gurze Books, 2001. ]


             6)       A survey of college students found that they would prefer to marry an embezzler, drug user, shoplifter, or blind person than someone who is fat.
[Gaesser, Glenn A., PhD. Big Fat Lies: The truth about your weight and your health. Gurze Books, 2001.]


           7)        The death rate for eating disorders is 5 to 20%.
[American Psychiatric Association, "Practice Guidelines for Eating Disorders." American Journal of Psychiatry, 150(2) (1993) pp. 212-228.]


           8)        Americans spend $50 billion annually on diet products.
[Garner, David W., PhD, and Wooley, Susan C., PhD. "Confronting the Failure of Behavioral and Dietary Treatments for Obesity," Clinical Psychological Review 11 (1991), pp. 729-780. ]
                    $50 billion is more than the Gross National Product of more than half of all the nations in the world, including Ireland.


Some really scarey facts and figures there I think !!!???? Really ? Would you rather get run over by a truck than be fat ? That so many young people think that way is really sad and a testament that perhaps all this has gone far enough and it's time for change ?!

I am currently pursuing some of the questions raised in this blog with professional practitioners to conduct my own poll to get a current analysis of how dancers feel and I would be interested in anyone who can give me the benefit of their own personal experiences and hear your thoughts on body image in the female dancer and the quest for "perfection".

How much does your body fit the image of what a "perfect body" should look like?

Have you been influenced by your peers and the role the media plays?

Shouldn't we be devoted to redefining "real beauty"? I'd like to believe it is achieveable to change attitudes, what do others think?

Is it an impossible dream for the future?

Whether she’s dressed as a mermaid in a wheelchair or has machine gun fire shooting from her tatas, one thing is clear: Lady Gaga makes no apologies for who she is. While the music icon might not be considered conventionally pretty, she owns her look and she makes no apologies for it, and her songs encourage young girls and women to do the same.

In her own words;"When I wake up in the morning, I feel just like any other insecure 24-year old girl. Then I say, ‘You’re Lady Gaga, you get up and walk the walk today.’”

Gaga is all about self-empowerment, whether you’re gay or straight, black or white, heavy or thin.

In the words of the Lady herself,
"I'm beautiful in my way, cos God makes no mistakes, don't hide yourself in regret, just love yourself and your set 'cos baby we were born this way!" 

References

Searching for the perfect body -         http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/eating_disorders/46745

Talking Body Image -      http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leslie-goldman/body-image_b_878132.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1564628/Helen-Mirren-attacks-horrifically-thin-models.html

http://erin-konrad.suite101.com/body-image-in-advertising-a80175

Council on Size & Weight Discrimination, website, www.cswd.org