Ashley Harris [published with permission of student]
Professor Frey
English 101
25 July 2013
The Broken Body Image of a Ballerina
Renée K. Nicholson’s rhetorical narrative, “Five Positions,” promotes extreme caution by bringing awareness that accompanies following one’s dream to become a prima ballerina while upholding self-worth and body image. The text follows Nicholson’s involvement in ballet, from falling in love with ballet as a child to the sacrifices of attempting to make it in the competitive world of dance. Nicholson’s five visual sections document the movement of time, essentially her shifting view of the ballet, and reflection on body issues. Her imagery and foreshadowing demonstrate the struggle of overcoming one’s harmful opinions about their body, while her character transformation and tense changes support that recovery is a continuous progress and Nicholson still regresses as an adult.
Nicholson’s fourth section reflects bouncing between body acceptance and hatred, demonstrating the beginning of her internal transformation. Body image is the reoccurring theme throughout the text; Nicholson refers to her experience posing nude for an art class by saying, “Although the class was mostly young men, it didn’t occur to me that they saw me as anything other than a subject to be drawn” (378). By isolating herself as a genderless object, she is overlooked and objectified; the internal reflection on how she views herself sets the tone of forfeiting. She attempts to move forward with body confidence, being confident enough to pose nude, and then regressing after seeing an interpretation of her body. Note that the example is placed in the fourth section and the tone is increasingly disheartened. The time progression follows an innocent, young girl discover a love for dancing, which manipulates her into issues of body image and self-worth.
Another instance from the fourth section of “Five Positions” is where body image is objectified when Nicholson sees a sketch of herself. She depicts the occurrence as “[I] couldn’t decide if it was beautiful or unbeautiful, but something in the depiction was both very close to me and so odd it couldn’t have any connection to my body. I was affected by this picture, scared by it. What I remember in particular was practically running out of my car and driving away,” which shows how she contemplates between the composed shell of the dancer and the insecurities of a girl (377). However, reflecting on the part-time job of being a model, Nicholson recalls that her “perspective about my body shifted… What is remarkable about this is that I was not embarrassed to do it. I was more comfortable unclothed in front of strangers than I was in a leotard and tights in the ballet studio. The artists studied me to recreate my form, while in the ballet studio just my form, just my body, would never do… On the couch I had no standard to live up to”, which hints at a fraction of the pressure ballerinas are under to maintain bodies that are, to someone’s mind, perfect (377). Nicholson’s conflict with her body that “would never do,” exhibits the impossible standard where she holds herself. But because of this placement in a later section, her view has shifted and there is some identification that ballet has broken down her body image.
In the same section, Nicholson’s imagery foreshadows what it takes to be successful in the world of dance. In the fourth section, she describes the position as, “Fourth is crossed, but open. In this way, it is complicated,” which depicts the internal contemplation to come as she battles her own level of success (376). She describes being approached by an older man as “a curse. But as a ballet dancer, if I wasn’t desirable, I was a failure. So if I was disgusted, I was also pleased,” implying that she did not know how to interpret others’ desire of her body and could not determine if these advances were equivalent to her standings in shows (379). She admits to her uncertainty with the fourth section imagery and performing period of her life as “complicated” and that leads into the fifth section of Nicholson’s self-proclaimed failure in the dance industry.
Another device is Nicholson’s fluctuations between tenses to caution her audience of the issues of body image in her confliction. This demonstrates her conflicting emotions between loving and hating not only ballet, but herself; the fifth section can be classified as learning to come to terms with one’s self and Nicholson’s warning for body image peace. Toward the end of her text she blatantly states, “Ballet sets a nearly impossible standard. It is erotic. Beguiling. Sexy. Demure. Slender. Extended. Driven. A composed surface, insecurity underneath. As a dancer, I loved and hated myself,” which demonstrates the conflict of being a dancer and never achieving an unrealistic goal, which also echoes the warning of being cautious with chasing after dreams if they are so harmful, in this case both physically and mentally (381).
This instance of conflicting tenses is the only example throughout Nicholson’s text of how she feels about herself now. This only demonstrates how she feels with past tense, implying she no longer harbors that “loved and hated” view of herself. Although, by eliminating these two extremes, the reader is left in purgatory and to assume that Nicholson is somewhere in between love and hate, having a neutral view of her body after years of harmful conditioning.
By progressing through the five “positions” or titled section breaks throughout her essay, one can watch the tone shift as the sections progress. Although her body image becomes crippled the higher in the ballet world she goes, the reader must acknowledge that there was foreshadowing in section two, depicting a young Nicholson questioning her physical self-worthby asking “I began to wonder if I would grow up to be pretty”, which can be identified as one of her earliest thoughts toward body image; showing how younger children are focusing on external validation of physical appearance (371). In this second section, Nicholson’s foreshadowing operates as her primary device to address the issue that rings true to a large percentage of girls in society, who are unhappy with their appearances and/or have eating disorders. At the beginning of the third section, her teacher advised her to “‘Try a little mascara. Some blush and lipstick too,’” which, in a sense, excuses Nicholson from her obsession with body image considering dance instructors forced it upon her at an impressionable age (372). It also conditions little girls to believe that beauty is the only factor that counts. In this context, dance is a poison to a girl’s self-esteem.
By using these five sections and examples of reflection, Nicholson achieves in demonstrating that a girl should hold their self-worth to a high standard in the form of a cautionary tale. She admits in this text that she herself went through multiple stages of self-loathing, developing from an insecure child to an adolescent that must be socially accepted to the demolished self-esteem of a young adult. Through this text, Nicholson establishes the conflict of loving and hating ballet by balancing her negative anecdotes, from scared of the sketch of her nude body to being desired by older men, with her positive ones, from feeling beautiful and powerful while dancing to developing crushes on boys throughout her career. Although there is minimal evidence that Nicholson has truly recovered from the abusive relationship that is ballet, considering she stays involved with dance after her own failed career, the reader can assume that she has achieved peace with the sport and her body. Nicholson’s cautionary tale becomes applicable to girls globally with her ability to “fix” her broken body image, even when it proves to be a continuous struggle every day to accept one’s self, which provides hope through progress.