In October, a few years after moving from Boston to San Francisco to become a professional dancer, Lisa Bufano took her own life. She was 40.
That horrifying, heart-shattering moment when you go to link people to someone to essentially say "Piss off with your closed-minded, able-ist, sizist, that-person-can't-x-because-they're-y-ist bullshit" and you find this.
There was a conversation at work today about plus sized ballerinas that for me boiled down to "fat chicks can't ballet." I wasn't actually part of the conversation and it was not in an environment where it would have been appropriate for me to say "it's not about give them the part because they're fat it's about don't write them off before you know what they can do; It's about don't look at the size of their ass or the fact they have a belly and assume they can't do something. How about you base your ideas of whether they can or can't something on merit rather than just looking at them and saying 'we don't want you, fatty, you're not good enough'?" So I said nothing. Not unusual for me in a lot of cases. I often choose not to get confrontational. And no it's not about diminishing what professional dancers do in fact it has nothing to do with them. No one's saying "don't give the obviously skilled and talented dancer the job because she's just one more skinny chick." It's about "give the chick who happens to not be skinny the chance to surprise you before you write her off." Yes dance takes huge amounts of training. Definitely go with the person with the most talent and best skill, but how the hell are you supposed to know if that person has that skill or talent if you shut the door in their face before they even audition?
So I was going to spam everything I could with lots of Lisa Bufano's work. Call it passive aggressive; I call it turning a negative into a positive. Google brought me the above link. And it broke me apart for the evening.
I deal with a lot of "Can't." I have always dealt with a lot of "Can't."
"You Can't because you're fat."
"You Can't because you're not pretty."
"you Can't because you read too much."
"You can't because you're different."
"You Can't because you're broken."
"You Can't because you're weird."
You can't because you're not what we think you ought to be.
Lisa and her work were, for me, very much about kicking all that Can't bullshit straight in the teeth. She was/is someone I could hold up and say "you're wrong." I know you're wrong. She knows you're wrong. In fact there's a whole world full of people out there who not only know you're wrong, but prove you wrong on a regular basis. In my passive aggressive sort of way, that is.
I know, technically she's not a fat ballerina, but my point stands. People looked at her and probably said many times "you Can't.'
I don't want those voices to be what killed her. I don't want her to be gone because she got tired of hearing Can't every five minutes. She seemed very much like the kind of person who did things on her own terms for her own reasons. I hope that's the reason she chose to make her exit when she did.