Emmab81

I have been both a skinny belly dancer (52kg) and a 'larger' dancer (84kg) and now sit somewhere inbetween. It seriously annoys me when I hear 'oh you need a belly to belly dance' generally I find people expect to see belly dancers as larger ladies and then when they are they are shocked to see that they would get up and show off their stomach.

Ahava_Melantha

or some other things i hate:

1. when an afrocentric women claims that ALL belly dancing comes from Africa and it is a black womens' dance and black women came up with undulations, and most belly dancers are a bunch of white women stealing the black womens dance

2. when some women feel they have the right to bellydance because they're large, but you can tell they don't really KNOW how, and they're up on stage doing SOMETHING but who knows what, but they label it as belly dancing.

ugghhhh.

skinny women can belly dance and so can larger women. neither one of them is more skilled than the other because of what kind of body they have imho

Amulya

A teacher who comments on someone's weight of figure is unprofessional. And one that lets the other students say such things as well without telling them off, grrr!

Time for another teacher I think.

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xfiendfyre

My sister and I are both sizes 10 and 12 respectively. If we were to model, we would both be considered plus size even though in retail, plus size is 16+. Plus size model can be as low in size as 10/12.

But hey, we're getting there.

I agree with this so, so much! I hate it when people critique dancers for being too skinny, too fat, not having enough hips, etc.

There are a lot of people who just don't have control over their body size. I had a friend in high school who was 5'10" and only about 115 lbs. And she ate a LOT, more than myself (and I am a lot bigger than her!) She used to bring 2 lunches to school in a desperate attempt to gain weight and she never could.

LadyLoba

Very true. If you've signed up for a belly dance class, you are there to learn belly dance. If somebody wanted a body makeover, they'd go talk to a dietician or a personal trainer or some lifestyle makeover type coach.

And other students...grr is right. I seem to have missed the news the day these people were all appointed to the panel that declares which body type is attractive to everybody in the world.

I taught a writing workshop once where I got on a guy for similar behavior. One of my students had cognitive disabilities and some speech impairments...but she was perfectly capable of writing teen love stories...and she worked harder than anyone else. Well, this guy who sat in front of her fancied himself a great writer even though all he'd ever done was write one unpaid column that got published in the local paper.. and he would do things like smirk at this girl when she read, talk over her, start passing his column around to other people when she was reading her story. It was pretty clear he didn't think she was worthy of being in the same workshop as him.

I caught him doing it and told him flat out to put the column away, turn around, and be quiet while another student was reading. He doesn't like me to this day...but that's really too bad. No matter what anyone else thinks of a student...if they can do the work of the class, they deserve to be there.

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"Never hurt a fiction writer. You will wind up the model for the villain in their next story."