looks ~ do they matter

[Ahava_Melantha]

i'm not sure where to post this really

i know that with bd, to a certain extent, aesthetics do matter just a wee bit.

so I'm wondering - do looks matter much?

does it matter much to NOT be eye candy? I know some ppl say the young and beautiful skinny bdancer and others say you can't bd w/o a big belly.

just curious. does it matter much?

and for dancers who want to go more than a hobby, do you really need amazing looks to go that far?

 

[LilithNoor]

It depends what you mean by looks, I think.

To go professional, I think you need to be quite physically fit, and for most women, that results in having a fairly toned figure.

I think there's also an expectation that you will 'make the best of what you have', so your costumes will be designed to flatter your good points and downplay those that you feel are less aesthetic. And of course, you're elegantly made-up and perfectly coiffed so the fact that you may not have been born with a face like Angelina Jolie is not all that relevant.

Attraction is a very subjective thing, so while some customers may prefer to see a slim blonde, others like curvy brunettes, or tattooed tribalistas. The market for my 'style' (fat, glasses, piercings) may be quite small, but I'm held back by my lack of skill, not by my appearance!

 

[Aniseteph]

Just a hobbyist, but I don't think you need amazing looks to get on. Have you seen what you can do with make up when you get to wear belly dancer / drag queen amounts? I've seen well known dancers without stage slap on and - shhh... - they look just like normal people!!!

I suppose if you are getting hired by the general public then the further you get from some face/figure "ideal" the more you have to make careful costume choices and make the most of your other strengths. Dance skills, entertainment value, personality, professionalism, perseverance... all more important in the long run, IMO.

And when it comes to teaching IMO a pretty face and figure will get you NOTHING.

 

[Erik]

I know some ppl say the young and beautiful skinny bdancer and others say you can't bd w/o a big belly.

Gee whiz. I signed in to send a PM to someone on a non-dance issue, and one thing led to another.

For some people there is only binary logic. It's either one or zero, black or white, right or wrong, etc. The stereotype of the young and beautiful dancer bugs me especially. I can recall several TV plays and motion pictures in which the producers wisely went with an older and heavier dancer for purposes of realism. In these cases the young and beautiful dancer would not have been believeable within the story and would have caused the scene to flunk. It is merely one example of art reflecting life.

Of course, as soon as I say this, it might be assumed that I have a prejudice against young and beautiful dancers. No, not quite. As long as her heart is in the right place and she's not using the dance as a springboard, there is no problem.

 

[Ahava_Melantha]

okay just curious. well i am losing weight slowly although i don't perform anymore. but when I did, and that was b4 i put on some weight - yeah some men come up to your and basically say your fat and you have to do this to get attention. yeah, and that was my version of thin. ughhh.

and yeah, i guess you do have to be pretty fit to be professional. i am slowly increasing my strenght and stamina. so totally understand.

i was thrilled when i could do these 3 drums solos (6 min total) without a break in between and without sounding like an asthma attack lol

okay, thank you so much for the help. it eases my insecurites, hehe.

 

[Tarik Sultan]

It really depends on the context you are dancing in. Student haflas, events in the dance community etc, it doesn't matter because what we're concerned with is the dance itself. Its a very accepting and nurturing environment. Onvce you go outsifde our world into the general public, then it matters a whole lot more. Night clubs, people looking to hire dancers for parties etc, just like with every other dance form, there is an expectation of a certain body aesthetic. Not neccessarily rail thin, but not over weight either. It sucks at times, but it is what it is. If anyone is going to participate in that arena they have to come to terms with that fact. One way around it though would be to create your own performance venue where the people who come are of like mind.

 

[Kashmir]

If you want to be hired you need to fit the aesthetic of the hirer. You can be the best dancer ever - but you may never get the chance to show it.

I once took three students along for an "audition" at a local restuarant - having had problems in the past with another restaurant owner I thought I'd be on hand - the guy never even asked them to dance - never even asked about their training, experience, costumes - he checked out their bust, their hair and their face - one was "almost acceptable" - but too old (he wanted under 30).

Another excellent dancer with decades of experience - good with customers, thin, beautifully dressed - was let go when she hit 50 (although she looked much younger).

Considering there are so many people out there who want to dance that some will do commerical gigs for free, the buyer has all the power.

That said, what do you want to achieve? Do you want to gig regularly? (Frankly it isn't what it's cracked up to be and it wrecks your social life) Do you want to teach (in which case looks help but are only a small part of sucess)? Or do you just want to dance occasionally, maybe with either a student or semi-pro troupe?Each has its own requirements and rewards.

 

[Kashmir]

To go professional, I think you need to be quite physically fit, and for most women, that results in having a fairly toned figure.

Doesn't mean commerically thin though - I can put in a 40 hour dance week (that is moving for 40 hours) and last year I completed a 5 hour drum workshop (still dancing to the end) - but I'm still a size 16 which is too big for many gigs.

 

[Zumarrad]

okay just curious. well i am losing weight slowly although i don't perform anymore. but when I did, and that was b4 i put on some weight - yeah some men come up to your and basically say your fat and you have to do this to get attention. yeah, and that was my version of thin. ughhh.

That was them trying to get somebody's attention, yours or a friend's, by being obnoxious.

To dance professionally you generally do need to meet certain physical criteria, whatever those may be. But to dance for pleasure and to share with likeminded friends and loved ones? Doesn't matter how you look at all!

 

[Sirène]

okay just curious. well i am losing weight slowly although i don't perform anymore. but when I did, and that was b4 i put on some weight - yeah some men come up to your and basically say your fat and you have to do this to get attention. yeah, and that was my version of thin. ughhh.

Please, let's not insult the rest by calling these troglodytes "men."

If it's any consolation, this bad behavior is not exclusive to males, nor is it exclusively directed at heavy people. At the last Rakkasah East I had the pleasure of sitting in front of two women who spent the entirety of one performance audibly pitying the small breasts of the dancer. :wall:

 

[khanjar]

Of course as is anything in the west the media not only dictates but also educates, still images rare it is that any have not seen photoshop and there the digital enhancement that editors desire. Of course this is unfair as few naturally meet that criteria there indicating the few are not the norm, but media continues to dictate and educate and that whilst western society is getting larger all the time,it causes much heartache for many.

And what media creates translates to many a venue, because media has educated audiences to expect to see what media has said is the iconic impression of beauty. Of course beauty sells and can sell a business, so the desire is for the rare or unreal. But of those people who align with the ideal what life can they have to stay on top, for sure is it not just another form of slavery to fit into others ideals ?

From experience the afore mentioned ideal that media has created, those whom I have met that conform to the ideal, as people, they are not people I wish to spend time with because they themselves have an ideal of what a suitor should look like and are so good at pointing out faults.

I used to like skinny chicks because they are a female version of me, but given what I know many a skinny chick that does not do drugs has to go through to slow down what nature has decided makes for a person who is basically an unrelaxed pain in the backside, so now my aim is natural people, people who live and enjoy life, not fat but fat in the right places, a person that cares about their appearance but is not so anal to ascribe to a media ideal.

Where I saw my ideal in belly dance, was a Nath Keo performance, he dancing with seven females, all of them to me real women. The performance was on youtube but has I believe since been taken down, it was a dance to walla marra, even the comments to the video described real women and what women should look like in belly dance, which was not the media ideal.

Media has a large responsibility, but what people have to realise is media is a fantasy.

 

[Tarik Sultan]

That was them trying to get somebody's attention, yours or a friend's, by being obnoxious.

To dance professionally you generally do need to meet certain physical criteria, whatever those may be. But to dance for pleasure and to share with likeminded friends and loved ones? Doesn't matter how you look at all!

In the context of performing in the general public, yes looks do matter. But even when you meet the desired body type you are still open to ridecule. There are just people out there who think because you're an entertainer that somehow you're not really human and the rules of good manners do not apply to you. I was dancing with another dancer at a pub. They received me very well, but when she went on, the women became very cold and even hostile. A guy was about to tip her when his girlfriend said, "she's too short to be a belly dancer". Idiot guy says to her, "yeah, she's right, I can't tip you you're too short".

One day I was dancing, mind you my stomach was a bit.... lets just say not as firm as I would have liked it to be. I'm dancing when some drunk gym rat gets up and yells, "You don't have a 6 pack, this is a 6 pack". So I look at him and i yell back, "maybe I don't, but I can work what I got, what the f*&$ can you do"?! Shut him down on the spot. And then there was the time the guy told me he wanted to put his $20 tip in my p*&&y. I swear I'm not making it up!

Bottom line is that when you get right down to it, none of us are so perfect that we are immune from attacks of one kind or another. Even the girls who have the right shape know that they could walk in to find out they've been replaced by someone with bigger boobs, a thinner waist, a rounder a$$, longer hair, whatever. Being a performer means having to cultivate inner strength otherwise the world out there will pick you a part one piece at a time till nothing is left, if you let them.

 

[Ahava_Melantha]

okay, thanx for the reminder. can't please them all. but hopefully if you're good enough MOST will love you.

and can see the passion

umm, i remember these latino men came close to the stage and was like "i bet she can ***K really good in bed" guhh. i can here you!

yes so it sucks. if I was going to perform again it was going to be with a local dance troupe.

 

[Daimona]

umm, i remember these latino men came close to the stage and was like "i bet she can ***K really good in bed" guhh. i can here you!

yes so it sucks. if I was going to perform again it was going to be with a local dance troupe.

And this story fits well at the http://bellydanceforums.net/other-dance-stuff/14953-have-you-ever-had-deal-pervs.html-thread.


All in all, looks do matter - but in the end, what really matters is how you percieve yourself and how well you dance.

 

[Yame]

I'm not reading all the responses so I may just be adding to the echo chamber, but here's my experience:

No, you do not need good looks to become a great dancer. You don't even always need good looks to become a professional dancer, however there are different kinds of "professional." For most of them, you do need to fit a certain aesthetic.

There are a lot of professional dancers out there who are not really marketable to most of the general public so they don't really gig much per se, but they do teach classes, workshops, perform at dance events, some tour their countries or the world teaching and performing for other dancers.

However when we talk about professional dancers we usually mean gigging dancers, those who perform regularly at restaurants and clubs and/or GP private parties, weddings, etc. The harsh reality of this market is that looks factor in a great deal. One can be somewhat outside the expected parameters of society to get these gigs, but not *too* much. People can be left out based on weight (for being "too fat" or "too thin," though too thin is usually not considered much of a problem these days, a total lack of "womanly curves" can often times be a dealbreaker), gender (men have a hard time breaking into a lot of venues), age, and even skin color (horrible, I know, but ask any black belly dancer and they'll attest to the fact that it's an uphill battle getting certain gigs).

Of all these things though, having a commercially pretty face is actually one of the least important. As we all know, anybody can look beautiful with the right makeup. And we all wear so much makeup to perform anyway, we don't even look much like our usual selves.

Of course it's important to note that even when it comes to the GP, there isn't just one look people are looking for. The "requirements" are certainly more narrow and harsh than those of the dance community, but not THAT narrow that you can only look ONE way to be able to gig. In fact, some venues do want a little bit of variety. I myself feel like a child or a stick figure next to the beautiful, curvy women that make up most of my professional community, but I work with what I have and I've been lucky to get many opportunities in spite of this (and, in some cases, because of this). Some people will like the way I look and some people will think I should put on weight and get some breast implants. I can't please everybody so I'm not going to try!

One thing anyone can do regardless of body type or professional aspiration though, is to choose costuming that works with your physique rather than against it. It's hard at first to know what works, but with time and experience we start to figure it out. And, as mentioned before, makeup!

 

[Yame]

I apologize for the double post but I just feel I need to add the disclaimer that my paragraphs above are in no way an endorsement of the status quo, but simply my explanation of what the status quo is.

They do not not reflect my own thoughts on the matter. Personally, I believe we'd all benefit a great deal from living in a world where the most important thing for a belly dancer to "make it" in the professional arena is dance skill, and where the general public has the same priority and therefore we could see dancers in restaurants and clubs who are fat and thin and everywhere in between, of all ethnicities and ages and heights and looks so long as they could dance.

However, I can not lie and pretend everyone thinks the way I do. Even professional dancers whose bodies are perfect by most of our standards go through pressure for not looking good enough, or pressure to maintain the look, and people who fall outside what is accepted go through even worse. It's just not a pretty world a lot of the time...

 

[Ahava_Melantha]

thanx Yame! I appreciate your input. yeah, right now I'm too shy to perform anyways. when I was 15/16 i was FEARLESS on stage. now i'm dancing awkward in front of my gma. go figure, lol.

Hopefully when I'm ready, all will go well. thanx so much.

 

[Amulya]

From the time I first saw a belly dancer till now I noticed that a lot of (female) professional belly dancers are like average people, but still with a quite wide range of looks. I think a healthy fit kind of look is a bit expected, but what fit is is in the eye of the beholder. You rarely see a dancer with a six pack.
Like said before, some dancers just look like random people without make-up and the costumes do a lot too of course. You can adjust so much with the right costumes

I have rarely seen any 'commercially thin' belly dancers though. I was one of them and it wasn't always appreciated (for example rude people offering me food constantly), but most of the time it was ok.

People who hire someone can have different tastes, some might choose someone because they like that person's costumes on their web site, or maybe because she looks 'Middle Eastern', or maybe a whole different idea. And often people don't even know what the dancer looks like as they hire someone because they heard of the dancer being good or the client has been given the name of a dancer who can substitute.

I think I read on this forum that the average professional belly dancer is in their 30's and there are a lot of famous dancers are in their 40's. So age doesn't seem too much of an issue either. Although I think some keep it secret to avoid what happened to the dancer mentioned earlier in this thread who was sacked when she turned 50 (I wonder, if the restaurant owner didn't know her age, would he have sacked her?)

 

[Ahava_Melantha]

I know! horrible. so many awesome dancers still doing their thang in their 50s n 60s. ughhh.