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After last week's workshop with Martin, I started thinking about the ugly feelings I have about myself and about my hobbies. It's personal and somewhat difficult to face up to, but that's the point. Confronting my consciousness about that little voice in my head is part of the work I need to do to be able to fully formulate my ideas.
As usual, I am relating this back to ballet - in a way I've realised there is so much about myself that stems from the discipline. I grew up with it - my ballet teacher is like my second mother, and in a way my outlook on myself and the way I present myself in my world is through that ballet lens.
The first thing I would assume is surrounding my body - obviously there is a well-known caveat with ballerinas, they must be skinny and small. Maybe this is a testament to my teacher and my family, but my weight never really played a part in whether I was allowed to dance or not. But none-the-less it still prayed on my mind as a teenager. In that sense, when you become hyper conscious of your bodies movement and line, you obviously become hyper conscious of what you look like compared to other ballerinas. If that made me more body-conscious than other girls I don't know, but what I was aware of was whether I was able to fully achieve that 'beauty' I talked about in my last post.
I guess you always think of these things when you're little, you dissect yourself for years, and only realise the implications this frame of mind has on yourself when you're older. But did my ballet help me or did it make my body image worse? It allowed me to really pick out my issues, but is that good or bad?