Self Image With Dancers : Dancers

During my research, I found various interviews with dancers of all different backgrounds based on how they felt about the dance world and the struggles that come with it. I picked out a couple of questions and answers that helped me develop a better understanding of my chosen area for this dissertation. Having read a number of interviews, I found the majority of answers were very similar which may suggest most dancers, even if from different genres, experience a similar pressure and fears when it comes to this industry.

What is body image? Body image is what one sees about themselves. What you imagine their appearance to be. This could include their weight or height. Most importantly it is how one feels about themselves. Do they feel happy with what they see? Maybe they feel sad with they see. Roughly 91 percent of women are not confident with their figures. Body stereotypes haves changed throughout the years. Since times began body image has been a big deal. A few examples being; in the 1920’s it was the flapper look. The flapper look being petite and straight as a board. Next in the 1950’s it became the hourglass figure also known as the pin up girl. This figure was very curvy but still with a slim waist. The 1980’s was the supermodel body. This being a tall athletic physique. In current times it’s alike to the 1950’s. Everyone wants the Kim Kardashian body. A skinny waist with big assets. In America only five percent of the population are happy and have the figure that is “normal”. Body image is greatly influenced by our peer and the culture we live in. If we are around people that motivate and give positivity towards our bodies then we will have a higher self-esteem. Just as if we are around people that are negative. When around others that give insults and degrade you, then you will have a low self-

Body image is an important concept in many adolescent and young adult minds. To have a positive body image is to know that you are beautiful. To be beautiful is to reach the standards of beauty in society. However, society is constantly changing those standards as time goes by. Many young men and women strive to reach the positive, even if it means their health, money, and mind. They have the media, such as magazines to thank for these wonderful standards.

They really just eat, sleep, study, and dance. They have an average of 7 hours of dance a day and, if they are in college, only get about 5-6 hours of sleep depending on their minors and majors. Their schedule is this way for a reason. Dancers that professionally do this or have it as a major, need to keep their muscles used to doing everything that they do. Try to think of it as playing music. If you learn a piece of music and then don’t play it for a week, the chances are, you probably forgot it. That’s why it is important to have dance classes every day. Dancers also have their schedule this way because of their performances. Most dancers usually have about 1 performance a week, which means that every day they need to buckle down and work. All dancers, for a performance, need to learn their dances, get fitted for their costumes, rehearse the dances, and have stage rehearsals at the place that they will be performing at. This happens usually all in one week. This doesn’t even include their other college classes that they may take. Now as I had said in the beginning when people see dancers dance, it looks effortless to them. This is only because dancers WANT to make it look effortless. That is their job. The dancers want to make it look graceful and beautiful, and that doesn 't come with making weird faces or having it look like they are working really hard. From this, some people

A body image is a subjective combination of all the thoughts, emotions, and judgments that an individual may perceive about his or her own body. Each individual has a unique perception of his or her own body. This image is strongly influenced and often times skewed due to the increasing pressure created from outside, societal factors. With a world that is continuously creating new forms of social media and entertainment, individuals are constantly exposed to images that supposedly define bodily perfection and are then expected to resemble these images in order to fit in and/or please society. The expectations that have been put in place by society has created unwanted pressure on individuals who feel as if they need to resemble these images to get society’s approval.

What is body image? From Sophia Greene’s ‘Body Image: Perceptions, Interpretations, and Attitudes’, body image is “the mental picture we have in our minds of the size, shape, and form of our bodies and out feeling concerning these characteristics and one’s body parts.” So, let break this down a bit. It all comes down to the mental picture we have of ourselves? But when the media is constantly throwing images out there of what “beauty” is, is it just our mental picture of ourselves that determines our body image? Is it all the other physical pictures around us shaping what we should look like? Out subconscious sees everything around us and is a part of determining that feeling concerning the characteristics of our body.

Body image by definition is an individual 's concept of his or her own body. It’s how they see themselves and think others see them as well. Everyone has a body image where it is good or bad but more and more we are seeing body image issues lead into disorders. Our body images are often influenced by the people we care about, people we aspire to be and people we want to impress. All too often the people we want to be are photoshopped, thin and “beautiful” and utterly unattainable. And the people we want to impress are the bullies that tell us we will never be good enough for them. I think stopping the problem of Body image issues needs to start at home when your children are young.

"Body image is the perception that a person has of their physical self and the thoughts and feelings that result from that perception.” The American society has been broadcasting a certain type of body,

Body image may be viewed as the way people see themselves and even imagine how they make look based off how they may feel about themselves. Yet it could also be viewed as the way other people see you. Body image, in medicine and psychology refers to a person 's emotional attitudes, beliefs and views of their own body (Positive and Negative Body Image). According to Positive and Negative Body Image, a negative body image develops when a person feels his or her body does not amount up to family, social, or media standards. Many people feel as if they don’t measure up to the belief of others. People who have accepted the way they look often feel good about their image and would be considered to have a positive body image. One’s appearance may not be measure up to how their family expects it to be or how it is perceived to be in the media, but once people learn accept and be proud of the way they look they’ll be better off in the long run. When a person is measured against the standards of the beauty seen frequently in the media and it doesn’t compare to how they feel about themselves it become discouraging. Having said that, long-lasting negative body image can affect both your mental and physical health which could lead to eating disorders down the road.

All women should have a slim body and a big butt. All men should have washboard abs and big biceps. These are just expectations that society has built up of how one should look. Often when we don’t reach it, there are consequences of developing negative body image issues. So what is negative body image exactly? According to NEDA (Australia’s national eating disorder association), body image issue is the dissatisfaction someone may have of their body not meeting unrealistic criterias. It is the negative thoughts and emotion that result from someone’s perception of their physical self. Unfortunately, in today’s day and age this is an existing issue because we live in a world that promotes unrealistic body ideals. It becomes a challenge to not compare yourself to these ideals when you see images of instagram models floating around in your everyday life.

Someone whose supposed purity and goodness shone through. This is where I believe the focus on dancer’s bodies began. From nearly it’s beginning, ballet has sought out an image or persona to be fulfilled by the dancers. Today a typical dancer’s body type is slim, with a long neck, short to medium torso, long legs and arms to proportion, high arches of the feet, and a fairly flat chest. Height requirements are dependent on the company’s desires. There is so much a dancer, at the professional level has to focus on. When it is time for contracts to be renewed, not only do the thoughts of “am I still good enough of a dancer” arise, as well as “can I move up? Are more people better than I am and progressing faster?” but there is also a worry of “does my body still fit the company’s desires.” Sometimes a company will reject a dancer, not because her technique is lacking, but because her body type is not what they have envisioned for that company’s image. It’s no wonder 78% of dancers struggle with some sort of anorexia or

The dancing industry continues to enculture the society and environment surrounding it, which is why many dancers combat with the excessive amounts of pressure placed on them to ‘be the best.’ Since I have been exposed to the micro, meso and macro levels of the dance industry through personal experience and forms of media, I decided that the basis for the chapters of my PIP would be formed around three specific aspects of the dance world from where dancers fashion their own morals, beliefs and values. These being how body image affects a dancer, how the sexualisation of young female dancers is becoming part of the social norm, and how social and environmental factors play a significant role in influencing a dancer. Once I had constructed what my chapters were going to be centrally focused on, I was motivated and engaged with my work and looked forward to utilising the research methodologies I had learnt in

What is body image? A two-dimensional model of body image incorporates both perceptual and emotional components. It focuses on both how we feel about the size and shape of our bodies and how accurately we perceive our body size as well. A more recent cognitive approach suggests that body image is a complex set of cognitive schema. A schema is a grouped body of knowledge. Groups of schema are readily available for important tasks such as guiding behavior, circumstantial scripts (or dialogue), and evoking the appropriate emotional, somatic, visual, and auditory responses in certain situations. The cognitive schema for body image is an organized domain of knowledge about oneself and others.

Due to the high levels of perfectionism many dancers possess (Quin, Rafferty, and Tomlinson, 2015) injury due to overtraining is a common occurrence (Ibid). A recent study conducted by Nordin-Bates, et al., (2011) found one in seven dancers will continue to dance during an injury and one in five do not seek any professional help for their injury. These results may signify the high amount of pressure that can be placed upon dancers to continue dancing, even whilst injured. It may also demonstrate how certain types of perfectionism such as self-oriented and socially-prescribed perfectionism, may dictate and impair a dancer’s judgement and the decisions they make regarding their health and well-being, such as recognising when

According to Dictionary.com, body image is defined as “an intellectual or idealized image of what one 's body is or should be