Study Showing Belly Dancers Have Better Body Image:

Afrit

New member
Salsa bad for body imagine? I have only done a few salsa classes but couldn't see anything that would be bad for body imagine. I'd think ballet would be, I saw first hand how it ruined the body imagine of the sister of a friend: she hadn't been accepted into ballet academy because her legs were 'too short', it also reflected directly onto my friend, because she also had 'short legs' and didn't fit the rest of the criteria even though she didn't want to enter ballet accademy.
Guys passing comments on women; not wanting to dance with ugly ones, fat ones, dowdy ones. Women passing comments - dissing a size 12 as "fat". Smoking considered a great health choice as it cuts down the desire to eat.
 

Aniseteph

New member
Horrible stupid people suck.

There ya go, it's not just the dance form, it's the culture or subculture around it. We wouldn't find belly dance so positive if we were made to feel useless and unwelcome for being older or fatter or slower to learn or whatever. Or if we were doing it because we had to dance for a bunch of seedy blokes to feed ourselves.

It makes me grateful that belly dance became popular in the West when it did, and arrived in a climate where it could be interpreted as by women for women empowerment and all that, rather than exotic lap dance. For all that it might be wishtorical hogwash, it may have contributed to a generally accepting belly dance community.
 

Amulya

Moderator
Afrit that sounds horrible! Luckily I didn't encounter that in the salsa classes I went to. But it would be nasty both ways I guess, women probably also only want to dance with the good looking guys. Maybe in the classes I went to it wasn't an issue because everybody were beginners?
I did ballroom and Latin for a short while and that would get pretty nasty in the higher levels too, I was lucky I discovered belly dance and ditched the ballroom and Latin before I got to those levels.
 

Safran

New member
If you have time, I suggest to listen to this talk by Peter Lovatt on dancers' confidence and self-esteem. I found some rather interesting points there, regarding how the self-esteem changes with dance frequency and your level of dancing.

[video=youtube_share;gn7uK7cklpY]http://youtu.be/gn7uK7cklpY[/video]
 

Amulya

Moderator
That very very interesting indeed! I wonder, since the turnover in belly dance is also very high (where people start learning belly dance but never perform or teach) if that makes people unhappy too. I guess in areas where there are lots of events where you can just dance socially (haflas) maybe that wouldn't be much of an issue because they get to dance anyway?
 

Kartane

New member
Amulya - that is a really interesting series of questions. It does make me wonder. I know if I don't dance for more than a few days, I get grumpy and blue.
 

Ariadne

Well-known member
I guess in areas where there are lots of events where you can just dance socially (haflas) maybe that wouldn't be much of an issue because they get to dance anyway?
That would be an interesting study, the effect of frequent social dancing on self esteem.
 
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