I remember thinking
how dance would make me feel beautiful. By beautiful, of course, I
mean thin. Parents who had hoped to enlighten and broaden horizons
by taking me to musical theatre and ballets had instead accidentally
mislead and slimmed my image of beauty. Oh damned ever are the good
a parent tries to do. Young minds and old alike are kind to
misinterpret. While mommy and daddy thought I would find the music
entrancing, I of course could see nothing but toothpick legs in all
of their elongated glory. How the Sugar Plum Fairy did glide across
the stage on those appendices, and with such ease! They may not have
been human legs at all; it must have been magic! Smeared with
delicate pink tights, I could not then define the grace it must have
taken to demand such leaps and bounds from such legs. The prima
ballerina, is prima beautiful, because she is prima thin. I thought,
looking down at my pudgy little girl thighs, that I could never
muster such grace as she.
Ah, but no, I had
the encouragement of two such parents who dared me to attempt
anything I found interest in at all. Write a poem! Taste the beets!
Put your finger in the center of the cake; even if you don't pull
out a plum, you'll have cake on your finger, and that, too, was an
experience my parents allowed me to have. So, I wanted to take dance
lessons, and not just any dance, but ballet! I would be the Sugar
Plum Fairy, and I would have branches for legs that would sweep me
across the stage and toss me into the air—and I would be beautiful,
and thin. I would dance in tights, and, my God, was that leotard a
lycra spandex poly blend? Oh yes, in all of it's metallic purple
glory, and a mock corset across the front, laced with county fair
cotton candy pink ribbon. I thought it made me look beautiful. My
brother thought it made me look fat, but what did he know?
Ballerinas are thin and beautiful and I was a ballerina scheduled to
dance the dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies during Act II of the
Albemarle Academy of Dance Recital. I would be on stage with a slew
of other young hopeful ballerinas, all beautiful and thin, in front
of an eager audience just dying to behold the utter skill of our
performance. And all of us in those tights, the very tights I saw
gracing the stage in the big city would smear our legs that delicate
pink.
Ah those tights, so appropriately named! Oh, and me in my
pair, with that cruel elastic band meeting my body across the middle
in such an unflattering way. My brother said they made me look like
two sausage links kinked together. I thought he might be right.
“Don't listen to your brother, stockings treat everyone that way.
What does he know anyway?” my momma said to me, and that was
enough. Then, I found if I pulled the tights all the way up, just
below where little mounds were starting to grow, then I would look
like only one sausage. This way, the tights held all my little girl
goop smooth and in place. I thought they made me look beautiful, and
thin. I had ribbons in my hair. I had tender little ballet
slippers. I had red lips and rosy pink cheeks and I felt beautiful!
I remember momma telling me I didn't need it, the lipstick and rouge,
when I told her I wanted her to paint my face. “You're so pretty,
baby girl, you don't need to cover up your beautiful face with that
stuff!” I can still hear her saying it. Maybe she was right, “but
all the other girls would be wearing it,” I told her in my most
plaintiff pleading voice. That plastic mud smell of lipstick still
makes me think of the look of shock on her face when she had finished
and gave me a once-over. “What! Is it beautiful!? Do I look like
the Sugar Plum Fairy!?” I asked, excitedly. “Yes, baby girl, you
look just like the Sugar Plum Fairy.” Had she said it with a tone
of exasperation? It didn't matter, I looked like the Sugar Plum
Fairy and I felt beautiful!
On the way to the
Agri-Civic center for my recital, my tights kept sliding down from
their place beneath my mole hills and I found it was very difficult
to pull them up from outside of my lycra spandex poly blend leotard
with the mock corset front. I was becoming exasperated. My brother
was in the backseat making fun of me as I tried reaching in from the
top, from the bottom, from the outside, all desperate attempts to
pull them back up. When we got there, momma told me not to worry
about it. “You look beautiful, baby girl, like a prima ballerina!”
Still, I went to the bathroom and pulled them all the way back up,
stretching them up over my little girl goop piles, up into my
armpits, and holding my arms down to my sides with such force that
that endlessly squeezing elastic band surely had no chance of
escaping back to it's ill positioned place across my belly. I was
feeling less beautiful, and less thin as I walked backstage.
Waiting there with
the other girls, I began to notice that of all of the girls in my
group, I was the biggest, not in length, but in girth. And not just
the biggest, I was the ONLY pudgy little girl in my group. They were
all much thinner, certainly no chance for sausage kink bellies there
amongst my peers. Should my tights dislodge from the grasp of my
armpits and slide down, sure enough, I'd be the only sausage kink on
stage. I began to panic. My eyes frantically scanned the entire
left wing looking for any sign of my chubby kin. It was no use. I
was surrounded by beautiful, thin little prima ballerinas and I
wanted to cry. I wanted to burst into tears and cry five thousand
each for the tights, for the slippers, for the ribbons in my hair,
for the lipstick and the rouge and toothpick legs that I would never
have. I wanted to run back and tell my momma that she was wrong and
it was mean to tease me so and tell me I'm so beautiful and I'm a
Sugar Plum Fairy when I obviously was not. I wasn't beautiful and I
wasn't thin and there was nothing I could do about it but go on stage
and let everyone laugh at the Sausage Plum Fairy. I remember our
exit on to the stage, and how my heart must've wanted so badly out of
my chest in that moment when I had to decide between lifting my arms
and letting those damn tights free or ruining the lines of my dance.
I lifted. The tights fell. I became the two links of sausage,
kinked in the middle.
But no one laughed. No one seemed to notice
at all. I caught one of the other girl's wide eyes and realized she
must be scared, just like me. I smiled and she smiled back, big, and
then we danced. Grand jeté
and plié,
we danced and bowed and made our exit. I remember giggling on stage
with the other girls at the end of the recital, waiting for our
parents to come and find us. The girl I had smiled at said she liked
my lipstick. “It's my momma's,” I said. “It's beautiful!”
And with the elastic band still choking me across the middle, I did
not feel thin, but I did feel beautiful.
