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February 6, 2024
A dancer’s healing of an eating disorder
I’ve been a dancer all my life. As much as I love it, dancing often requires being surrounded by mirrors and by people who have a certain body type or who want to be thinner. Dancers’ bodies, much like athletes’, are under constant scrutiny by the industry, social media, friends, and themselves. A general belief is that the way one looks directly correlates to one’s career success. I’ve succumbed to this thinking many times.
In high school, I had a string of bad body-image experiences in the dance studio—things teachers said, audition experiences, and my deep desire to measure up to my super-skinny friends—that led to a three-day experiment of eating nothing but lettuce with a little ranch dressing once a day. I lived in a mind-set of desperation and inadequacy. This later led to overexercising and a strict diet in college.
After college, I began my professional dancing and teaching career in New York City. It was a dream come true, right? In many ways, I was having the time of my life. But I knew that my eating habits were unhealthy—they weren’t making me happy or getting me jobs. Things needed to change.
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