Thread: Being Overweight Did Not Stop Me From Belly Dancing

Here is a link to a blog I posted today, talking about my first experience Belly Dancing. It was nerve racking due to the fact I'm overweight. Please share with others who feel the same way I did.- Misty

The Chubby Girl Was Meant To Belly Dance

First off, to the forum I read your blog ... awesome!, thank you for sharing, so glad you found a great teacher and continue to dance. Your Mum must be very proud of you. As for the first person you rang and her comments ... what can I say, just raspberries to her & may all her sequins fall off!
~Mosaic

Welcome to the Forum! I'm glad you found a great and welcoming teacher in the end. This is the one dance that everyone really can do. I have several larger ladies in my classes and they really rock!

Loved your blog, hope to see more in the future!

Two thoughts:

1) One of my teachers' very first exposure to Belly Dance was seeing a very large woman dancing. My teacher (who is VERY petite) thought it was the most beautiful thing in the world.

2) One of my dance sisters (who has since moved away) is/was a very large if not huge woman. We ALL loved her dancing - she had more to work with and her beautific expression...

So....

GOOD ON YOU!!!

Welcome! I read your blog, you should be proud of your perseverance! I think the same way about how belly dance makes me feel--when I started I felt in my heart like I was meant to do this...Keep on shimmying!

Great story MistyDawnHips, and its an important one to share. I'm glad the prejudice of that earlier teacher didn't put you off, and that you had the courage to try again. You've benefited far more by rejecting her, than she ever could have by rejecting you.

I'm glad to hear you found a compatible teacher. Thank you for sharing your blog. I'd like to reply to a couple of things you said in your blog:

To be her student you had to wear a black body suit and black leggings with a hip scarf, nothing more. Being self conscious about my body already, she wanted me to wear a outfit that exposed every roll I had.

I can tell you that as a belly dance teacher, I want my students to wear snug clothes so I can see the lines of the body. If I'm teaching figure 8's or hip circles, then I don't want to guess at what might be happening under a baggy T-shirt.

However...

I'm a bit less strict than the one you talked to, in that it's fine for my students to wear yoga pants or sweat pants, it doesn't have to be leggings. And it's fine for my students to wear snug T-shirts or tank tops, they don't have to be leotards.

I explained to her why I was interested in it. I was overweight I wanted to do a fun exercise , I had seen belly dancing in person and it looked fantastic. All she heard was overweight. She then asked me how much I weighed and my height , and when I told her she became very straight forward. She immediately told me that with my weight and height there was no way I could do this dance, I would not be able to perform a lot of the move she teaches.

How odd. No matter how much a person weighs, we all have the same musculoskeletal body parts underneath our skin and whatever fat we may have. It doesn't matter how much you weigh, you still have oblique muscles, quadriceps muscles, transverse abdominal muscles, rectus abdominis muscles, erector spinae muscles, and so on. (Don't worry if you don't know what those muscles are - it's just a list of some of the muscles used in producing belly dance moves. I'm using the anatomical terms to make the point that YOU HAVE THEM.)

It's ridiculous to say you can't do the moves she teaches if you're overweight because WE ALL HAVE THE SAME MUSCLES unless there has been some kind of injury, surgery, or birth defect.

I have never asked a prospective student her height and weight in the 15 years I've been teaching. I find that bizarre as well.

That said, depending on the prospective student's questions, I MIGHT mention that being overweight probably means she wouldn't be able to get much work dancing professionally, simply because most clients prefer to hire thin dancers, but I wouldn't bring that up unless the student asked about it.

You might find my "Bellydance Plus" web site helpful if you haven't already discovered it: Bellydance for Plus-Sized Women, Belly Dance for Full-Figured Women, and Bellydancing for Big Beautiful Women (BBW) It offers some costume ideas and other tips.

Tnx for sharing this inspirational story!

Hugs from one more chubby shimmy shaker

Glad you've found the curve-friendly side!