Interview: The Toxic Ballet Food culture

I had the pleasure of interviewing Charlotte on how ballet impacted her and her peers relationship with food, and the joys in her journey of recovery.

Margaret: “As a young ballerina, who had a lot of pressure to maintain a certain look, how did that affect your relationship with food?”

Charlotte: “Well, Ballet is most definitely a very toxic sport. There are a lot of stereotypes in which enforce this idea that Ballerinas have to be skin and bones. This idea is further supported by the ballet teachers as they are very toxic (from whom I had). I did ballet for all of my life up until when I quit, a few years ago. But, One of my teachers that I had gave us these waist-bands which would essentially suck your stomach in in order to make you look skinnier in a leotard. Growing up I was fine, but going into my teen years I witnessed a lot of people around me (in the ballet field) gain eating disorders out of the sport and I never thought too much of how I could be susceptible to disordered eating. However, it did and I started to stop eating, essentially starving myself. No one told me that starving myself was wrong because everyone at Ballet did it, so it was normalized and deemed good. It was so bad that it was encouraged for people not to eat. It was so toxic that I would dance and I would feel weak and sick. I was way too skinny and because of this I even lost my period for a year. I would not touch the majority of foods, and I was very depressed. However, going into 10th grade I quit and started to feel so much happier and felt like myself again. After quitting, my eating is a lot less restrictive.

Margaret: Can you expand on how you feel like quitting ballet and removing yourself from a toxic environment, made you feel a lot happier?

Charlotte: Definitely, food is my happiness now. Now at my new school, my closest friends are foodies so it’s really accepting and we all love going to eat food. Whereas, my old school and when I still did ballet a lot of people were the opposite and had this negative connotation on food. I love having people that support me, and encourage me to eat whatever I want