The Mannequin Ideal
by Ben Togut
You look at the picture from your junior recital and wonder what people found so captivating about you; your body no longer lithe, your feet no longer the image of crooked, bleeding perfection. You are a ballerina, the untainted picture of pre-pubescent prodigy, or at least you were. You can still hear the voice of Madame Fondant, “Pas de bourrée, rond de jambe, point the foot, plié,” over and over again. When you were not quite a teenager you would wake up at dawn every morning just so you could have an hour at the ballet barre, discipline and confidence personified.
But that future as the prima ballerina started to feel like a pipe dream. When you were thirteen your body began to betray you, first slowly and then all at once, a native invader. You had heard this was possible but never realized this was something that could happen to you. Every day you had a new routine. Pirouettes and pliés were soon compromised by whole days without eating, and when you did you were overcome by a type of rancid guilt that culminated in trips to the bathroom. You stopped being able to glide across the floor with effortless grace, for your body was running on borrowed fuel.
Your teacher just thought that this was a stage that all great dancers went through before they could truly blossom. Sallow skin, oxygen-deprived nails, hair falling out in clumps: these were the things your parents noticed, but you shrugged them off. To dance was to paint elegant lines, delicate brushstrokes against the white of the canvas, and you thought this could only be achieved if you were flawlessly waif-like. A choreographer you admired sat in on one of your classes, and you had a fantasy that she would take you under her wing, make you brilliant, legendary. But you faltered, unable to keep up with the others, those who could better veil their trauma as tiny broken things. Looking at them, you realized that your sanity was a far better prize than the mannequin ideal. You bent the sole of a slipper until it yielded. How easy, you thought, it is to break, to destroy; how easy to suffer. But you are not a thing to be broken.
