If you’re facing a moral dilemma
It was a question I wasn’t expecting. A female choreographer for a dance piece I was in asked the women in the group if we would be OK performing topless.
She requested that we think it over and then come to her with our thoughts. While my initial reaction was to feel conflicted, I could tell that the other women were excited about it, which made me hesitant to speak up. I didn’t want to ruin the choreographer’s vision or spoil the experience for my friends.
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During my time as a dancer, I have become very comfortable changing in front of colleagues and dancing in tight costumes, so technically I wasn’t uncomfortable with the concept of dancing topless. But it still didn’t feel like something I wanted to do. I knew it would take courage to speak up for myself, but I didn’t want to avoid doing so based on fear of being different or not being accepted. I wanted to speak up for myself based on whatever decision really felt right for me.
Initially, I couldn’t see any reason why performing topless would be wrong. It was possible that it would make others uncomfortable, but that is true of so much art. There would be a warning in the playbill and online so people could just not come if it was something they didn’t want to see. It was also scheduled to be a fairly small performance for a select group.
At the time, I was also taking an academic class where we were studying ethics and morals. I had been trying to better understand morality as a practical support to individuals and society—as something that improves our lives rather than something that is restrictive or inconsistent.
I knew that many concepts of morality have evolved from religion and seem to have their basis in beliefs about heaven and hell—or about God keeping a tally of what individuals do right or wrong and rewarding or punishing them accordingly. As a student of Christian Science, my understanding of God as divine Love especially didn’t fit with that last notion.
Also, the concept of inconsistent rules that were detrimental to certain individuals or groups didn’t work with my understanding of God as Principle, who orchestrates and governs life in a harmonious way that gives everything purpose. Like the laws of mathematics, nothing in God’s universe is random or arbitrary. Principle expresses itself in consistency, harmony, and universal goodness.
I knew it would take courage to speak up for myself, but I didn’t want to avoid doing so based on fear of being different.
It seemed clear that a good starting place would be to better understand my own spirituality and share that understanding with others. I knew that my spiritual identity was rooted in God, who is all good, which means I already express all the qualities that I want to contribute to society. It felt like dancing topless would put an extra focus on my physicality that didn’t feel necessary or helpful. Instead, thinking of my true substance as spiritual gives me an unchanging sense of stability and worth, which feels very different than basing my worth on how I or others view my physicality.
I was happy to be able to tell the choreographer that I wasn’t interested in dancing topless, because it felt empowering to be clear about where I stood and not have fear as part of my decision-making.
When I shared my thoughts with the choreographer, she was kind and understanding and ultimately decided to go forward without the nudity. After the performance, multiple friends in the audience and my fellow dancers all commented that they were grateful that the piece had not been topless. They felt that the overall message of the piece was delivered much more clearly without that as a distraction.
This was an important moment for me, as it gave me practice in speaking up for myself without fear and in relying on prayer to know what was really right to do. I was grateful to see that Christian Science offers clear solutions to moral dilemmas and that the result was collectively acknowledged as a good outcome.
