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

[Kaiserin]

TL;DR: Male pain is character building.
Female pain is natural, must be endured and never mentioned.

There's a thread in AIBU which was very triggering for me (and many others)

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3964498-Any-former-gymnasts-or-parents-of-gymnasts-our-there

It's linked to recent news:
www.bbc.co.uk/sport/gymnastics/53369831

Here was my original take on it in AIBU:

If it looks like a cult, walks like a cult, and talks like a cult...

I didn't do gymnastics but I did do ballet, and I'm afraid if was the same toxic culture of fetishisation of extreme thinness, and normalisation of (often self-inflicted) physical abuse.
"Now let's sit on you to help you do the splits. It's good pain, don't cry. Lift that leg higher. If it doesn't hurt you're doing it wrong. Tuck your tummy in. Don't forget to smile. Of course it's normal to have blood in your shoes, we all get blisters. No, she's not crying. Let's see how far we can bend your back. Oh was that a crack? Now don't be silly it doesn't hurt. Don't forget to smile. Etc."

More than the physical violence, it's the brainwashing... Eventually I switched to martial arts as it was less brutal. At least you were not expected to smile when you got hurt.

It really fucked my brains up, though. I'm so detached from physical pain, I can feel it very clearly, but I can't tell when my body has reached its limits. It's always "Yeah whatever, I'm fine, I'm fine... Whoops, I just collapsed, trip to A&E". And all the while I'm still poker faced or vaguely smiling, so medics are confused (you can imagine how well that all went when I was in labour...)

I think it's worth a proper feminist discussion, for a few reasons, such as:

• the fact pain is approached very differently in predominantly male sports (it's still viewed as "character building", but not something to be endured with a smile)
• the consequences this can have on women later in life, e.g. when facing labour (dissociation is not good...)
• the fact it conditions girls/women to just "take it on the chin" generally
• the fact this kind abuse is perpetuated not just be men, but by women as well (my ballet teacher was female), and there seems to be a sadistic component to it
• the way it's linked to very specific ideals of feminine beauty, and perpetuates the age old concept that "one must suffer to be beautiful"
• etc.

... Thoughts? (mine are a bit disorganised at the moment, because when I start unpacking them, it's just goes "This is literally ALL misogyny, EVER, in a neat little box with a tutu on top!", but I am triggered, so maybe jumping at shadows?)

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

@Stressing

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.

I've wondered a bit about the uniforms, particularly with regard to periods.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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*

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...

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.

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.

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.

Come how old was she and no blisters / blood / plasters?

It was common throughout our ballet school, and we had the shoes fitted, can’t see why they’d be all wrong

She began pointe in the autumn of Year 12. The only blood/blisters she ever got were from school shoes and once she scraped the top of her foot on something not dancing which then blistered and bled when she put her pointe shoes on afterwards. She was dancing 6 days a week from the age of 11. She preferred not to wear padding.

However she has hypermobile ankles and sustained a couple of injuries elsewhere that affected her ability to do pointe once she'd got past Intermediate Level. She gave it up in Year 11 to concentrate on jazz and tap.

I've been watching this thread with interest. Back when he was very small, DS went to the local gymnastic club, and I think could have been quite good. But when he turned three (yes, three, you read that right) they had a club policy that parents weren't allowed to sit at the side of the class any more. I felt that was way too young - but interestingly, whenever I've mentioned this on, say, AIBU threads on here, the consensus from parents with children seriously into gymnastics seems to be "but it's perfectly reasonable to chuck parents out - otherwise the kids won't concentrate and will always be running to mummy for reassurance."

I still think at three years old, running to mummy for reassurance is sodding normal, and it says something about the weird way the culture of gymnastics is set up that the parents get groomed into thinking otherwise. Also I felt it was a massive safeguarding red flag (but maybe that's because I'd already read Little Girls in Pretty Boxes which was mentioned upthread - it's an excellent book). I just had this very strong gut feeling that a club which wanted parental supervision out of the way wasn't on the level. (Not suggesting CSA, just bullying coaching techniques are much more likely with that sort of attitude).

My kids started dance and gymnastics like loads of them did around here. They lost interest in gymnastics fairly rapidly, but dance they still enjoyed. However I became increasingly fucked off with the dance school and their focus on body shape from very early on once the kids lost that toddler shape (they were full of the "oooh they're so cute" routine for the toddler ballet cash cow class) and when DD2's dyspraxia became evident I was very conscious they wanted to keep her in the class just to show how inclusive and fluffy they were - but hide her at the back of their next show so she didn't fuck up the uniform routine. Plus the competition mums had reared their head by then and blatantly wanted my kid out of the classes and the way.

So we hunted around and found a lady who's got pissed off with the big dance schools around here and how they milk parents for every drop and teaches for the love of passing on her love of dance, and they go there - no ridiculous uniforms - show up in whatever you have in terms of leotards and skirts, a huge bag of old shoes to rummage in to save you buying if you can get a pair from the used ones, and she took the time to look into DD's difficulties and tweak how she explained things for her. It was a nightmare - because this kid loves music and dance but there wasn't much out there that was accessible to her because of the general ethos of the dance community.

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.

I was reading up on the issues of abuse in these sports over the weekend and one thing came up that I don't think has been mentioned here, athlete on athlete abuse. While at elite levels, you have as many male and female gymnast, dancers, figure skaters, etc, at entry levels these are generally seen as 'girls activities.' So as these athletes progress, in any sport/dance that requires pairs there can be an incredibly, incredibly toxic power dynamic. The male athletes hold huge amounts of power over the females, as the competition for a partner if high among the women and girls. This can lead (and has led) to highly abusive situations where the girls/women are under pressure to give in to whatever demands the boys/men make or else they lose their partner.

The vast majority of my DS's extracurricular activities are these types of 'art-letics.' He does figure skating, gymnastics, acro, dance, where is is one of the only boys or even the only boy in his age group. I'll admit to having joked that he's at an advantage as he was going to try out for pantomime this year (they may not go ahead due to Covid) and so few boys try out that all he has to be is not completely terrible to be assured of a place. But the thought of him becoming an entitled abusive shit because of that disparity hadn't been something that had entered my mind. But I could see how it would happen. Tbh, all of his groups are fun and even when they enter competition which he hasn't done yet, or join pantomimes, it's all done with an emphasis on 'having a go' and just enjoying the experience, with any win being a bonus. But if he ever does start going further, I'll at least be prepared now to do my best to ensure that he doesn't abuse any power he has as one of the few males participating.