Gymnastics/ballet/etc. and the routine abuse female bodies and minds

On gymnastics, ballet, etc why can't leotards come lower like "boy short" swimsuits? They'd actually allow a more comfortable range of motion. I wear a swimsuit like the one in the image and it's significantly more comfortable than anything with a more knickers shaped bottom. Seams across the crotch and buttocks are less comfortable than a short shape. And you can let your pubic hair be as long or short as your personal preference. (My reason for choosing longer legged swimwear.)

There was also a change in 04 in women's figure skating to allow unitards. Women are still often reluctant to wear them due to the pressure of tradition but at least they have some sort of choice now. And arguments that ridiculously high legged leotards are necessary to judge performance are just stupid when other sports have (slowly) moved on. And when men can wear shorts or unitards and yet their performances are possible to judge.

Goose - the Bolshoi give their female dancers days off when they are menstruating.

Dd never had pain from pointe. A lot is to do with having the right shoes.

Good I’m glad it was just the way it appeared, rather than intentional.

Our feet were wrecked, loads of plasters, salt baths etc. We did it and soldiered on but would I want dd to...

On the question, I don’t know whether you can avoid pain for everyone, standing on your toes in pointe shoes seems fairly intense.

*Like I said I did pointe work and it was never painful.

I did too so I know what I’m referring back to. Not sure why I’d take your experience over mine*

I am not saying your experience wasn’t valid, or saying you should take my experience over yours - or that pointe work isn’t painful

My point was asking if it needs to be. If I can do pointe work with no pain, is it down to the training methods that make it painful, or is pointework painful no matter what you do and I am just the exception?

As with gymnastics nobody questions the methods. It is just how it is, and how it has always been done.

It may be possible to train en pointe without pain, for everyone. But we won’t know until we stop accepting pain as the norm and change the way things are done...

It’s also about what pointe represents.

There were good things about ballet too as I listed. I’m in the middle, I will enjoy her doing it at the start I reckon it would become less clear if she wanted to push it, which would be her choice.

Like I said I did pointe work and it was never painful.

I did too so I know what I’m referring back to. Not sure why I’d take your experience over mine.

As to the clothing a lot of that is also part of an abusive cycle, of control, of humiliation, rather than any good reason not to wear a certain thing.

Clothes must be close fitting for safety and to see lines. That’s all.

What I’d like for dd is harder to decipher. I would enjoy her doing ballet but I feel a bit funny about pointe due to the pain element

Like I said I did pointe work and it was never painful.

This is the issue- this mentality of pain being necessary, of overtraining, many hours, this “being what it takes” to be good at anything- how do we know it’s correct?

If we slowed down, stopped doing pointe work with bleeding feet, bars with ripped hands, back flips on stress fractures, and developed coaching methods that nutured bodies instead of destroying them...

Stop keeping kids on bars til their hands rip. Stop making them train injured. This is the point.

It is possible to train pointe with no pain. I did it, my friends did. But we started with literally minutes at the end of a class, once a week, and built up very slowly.

In many schools they just insist the girls must use tampons as soon as they start to menstruate, because pads with a leotard aren't really great. Anytime I've seen this questioned, ballet people say it's always been like this, suck it up. Not necessarily quite so bluntly.

But ballet has been around for some time. Back before the 1960s plenty of average girls took ballet classes but they were not usually encouraged to wear tampons. I can imagine that early in the history of ballet professional dancers might have done so, though older forms of tampons weren't always as reliable as modern ones. But then - fabric technology wasn't modern either, I can only imagine the clothes dancers wore were less stretchy and fitted.

The idea that ballet has "always" been like that seems pretty unlikely to me. There must have been some kind of accommodation for young ballet students in the past to manage their periods, whether it was missing classes or ???

I've never recieved a good answer to this though.

I could name a couple of colleges that still have this ethos. Luckily my dd never had ballet as a passion but used it as a vehicle fir her real love of jazz and tap.

Dds friend is at a ballet college. She has always been thin. Her parents have always controlled what she ate and drank.
Apparently now her breasts have started to grow too big for ballet and she is talking of having a breast reduction. This is all so she can maintain "a ballet body."
dd has said she thinks it's awful but the pressure is immense to conform.

What I’d like for dd is harder to decipher. I would enjoy her doing ballet but I feel a bit funny about pointe due to the pain element.

Obviously it’s not entirely my decision but just thinking about it.

Girls want to dance en pointe. They count down the days until they are allowed. Increasingly boys are also going en pointe too.

Only because they’re told by adults it’s the most important and difficult thing they could do and without obtaining this skill they’re never going to make it.

We danced en pointe younger than generally done these days. It must have been around age 9.

It took absolute commitment (I was quite good not brilliant, wrong knees though).

I loved that feeling of being in control of my body and I was naturally skinny anyway (not sure it was an issue very small ballet school in a town). Best advice from teacher was good timing as a group.

Anyway the negatives, going to ponder this now.

In ballet boys who go through puberty and don’t confirm to certain ideals are assessed out of elite training just as much as girls are.

DD has taken part in ballet, gymnastics and contemporary dance and hasn't encountered any of the attitudes you describe. The teachers/coaches have all been very supportive, have focused on well being in the broadest sense and there have been girls (and boys) of different shapes and sizes participating - including those heading into professional training.

Although the thing that doesn’t apply to boys is the extreme difference in body shape pre and post puberty which has a massive effect on performance, confidence and comfort (for example even just by nature of cup size as PP outlined), period issues and Outfits which show every curve with high-cut skimpy crotches.

No wonder at my gymnastics club in the 90s, I and most other girls stopped at the onset of periods etc. My dd goes to a high performing gymnastics school but is in the fun class now, the uniform is relaxed and the approach geared towards their own set goals/attainment rather than the anxiety inducing pushiness in her previous class.

Girls want to dance en pointe. They count down the days until they are allowed. Increasingly boys are also going en pointe too.

Attitudes in ballet are worrying. My dd in the past had a teacher who told the class that they should have an apple for lunch and when she was a dancer she survived on cigarettes & lettuce. (Thankful no longer teaching). A notorious head of dance at a vocational school recently left suddenly following an adverse inspection. We know children who have been screamed at and over stretched. We don’t know any pushy parents oddly, but parents are too afraid to question teachers authority.

These things apply equally to boys and girls, the only difference being boys in ballet are rarer so it’s easier for them to gain training places/jobs so the girls perhaps feel they have to strive for perfectionism more.

This teacher is prob a size 14-16 and shows body confidence herself.

I was v skeptical when DD started ballet, at her request, with a friend. She does ballet and modern dance with a fantastic local teacher who is a one-woman small business, no pain involved in her classes, I think she stops before the grade when they have to go en pointe. DC of all shapes/sizes. All about the strength, steps, movement, choreo etc.

Dance can be brilliant exercise for mind and body. I think this particular teacher is a great role model.

I did ballet, too, and I can't say the pain bothered me. It sure was tougher to play soccer with the boys, where I learned 'not to show when it hurt', just like they swept their pain aside. So I don't feel this pain aspect is a particularly 'female issue'.

What I do think, though, is that ballet is ridiculously weight obsessed, 'fat shaming' perfectly athletic and even outright thin (!) girls - a recipe for giving girls eating disorders. (I think I once read that even male dancers are often anorectic. But I have the impression that this is confined to professional male dancers, while every female hobby ballet dancer will get a taste of the fat-shaming treatment).

My DD did ballet from 3-14 and I have to say that I was glad when she decided to give up on her own accord. The pointe was worse. It was brutal. Plus all the girls struggled with the uniform: pale pink tights and leotard, when they started periods I don't know how they managed. Nothing was hidden. It all seem very antiquated.

all KaptainKaveman Sat 11-Jul-20 13:17:27
Imnobody4
I've never understood why women have to dance on points in ballet. It's always reminded me of foot binding.
It's what makes ballet look so beautiful.

The difficulty is part of the cachet. Dancing en pointe is tough but my goodness it looks sublime.

^^

Not for me — it makes me feel sick imagining the pain they must be in

The clothes aren’t the issue.

I'm not sure that's true. I did a lot of gymnastics as a child and remember feeling uncomfortable wearing leotards because your legs are splayed all the time. To be honest I think I'd feel the same now.

I was very thin as a teenager and I've only just realised, after reading this thread, how much the gymnastics was a part of that. There is only one acceptable aesthetic in gymnastics and it's petite with no boobs or hips. The earliest memory I have of me and the "gym girls" weighing each other was when we were 9 years old. That's mad isn't it.

I don't think this is a feminist issue as such, because it affects girls and boys equally.

The whole Machi football side. And other sports.
Gymnastics and ballet makes my skin creep. Especially stories of abuse, the female coach of the USA gymnastics team for example. Yuk!