Middle Eastern Dance and Weight: A Dance For All Sizes
by Claudia Clarke

People think that if you don’t have America’s weight issue, you are happy and you don’t have any problems…well people are wrong.

I’m 5 feet 4 1⁄2 inches tall and weigh 105 pounds (on a good day). I have a Body Mass Index score of 18 %. According to the Body Mass Index, if your height relative to your weight is less than 18-19 %, you are categorized as underweight. I have been underweight my whole life, and it is very difficult for me to gain weight. I don’t have an eating disorder or any illnesses; I just can’t gain weight. Yet for most of my life, my weight has been an issue for me.

As a young girl growing up in an African-American community, I was ridiculed about my weight. I was called names like “bones”, “bony”, “chicken legs”, “toothpick”, and other kind names. Those names really hurt me. At a young age I learned that my weight was something to be ashamed of, and somehow I was not good enough because of it.

As I aged, my issues with being skinny didn’t go away. I took that philosophy of shame and self-loathing and used it well into my adulthood. I did my best to hide being skinny by wearing layers, long skirts, or pants…but there it was, in the back of my mind and in front of the mirror. I couldn’t get away from feeling badly about being skinny.

I used to stand in the mirror and pick out the parts of my body that I absolutely hated; my skinny legs, my skinny wrists, my shoulders, my hipless pelvis-everything and anything about my body that I didn’t like. Then I used to stare at women and hate them because they had breasts, or hips, or nice legs, or weren’t skinny like me. I was just miserable.

Simultaneously with being ashamed of being skinny, I wanted to be a dancer. In my childhood, I wanted to join a tap dance squad at my junior high school. Even though I was afraid to try out, I wanted to be in it because I knew I was a good dancer. I remember the day of the tryouts. I wore a pink, light blue, and yellow pastel striped shirt, a pair of yellow shorts with pink piping at the sides, and a pair of navy blue tights. I thought that if I covered my legs, no one would know I was skinny. I remember thinking that I looked tacky and felt really skinny, but I plodded ahead anyway.

As I walked into the gym, I noticed one girl staring at me with such a look on her face. I don’t know why she was staring at me, but it made me feel worse than I already felt. I managed to get to my spot on the floor, but as I sat there, I began crying and couldn’t stop. I couldn’t run out of the gym fast enough. I never tried out for the dance squad and I never entertained the thought of dancing again until I was in my early twenties.

Once in my twenties, I tried to reconcile my desire to dance with my dislike of being skinny. I thought that I had spent enough time being unhappy about being skinny and I wanted to move past that feeling.

I took Afro-Brazilian dance classes while I was a student at Hunter College. I enjoyed them, but they didn’t grab my attention. Then I took some West African dance classes, but I didn’t like how I felt I looked doing it. I felt clumsy and inadequate. Then one day I woke up and said to myself that I wanted to learn how to “belly dance”. I didn’t seriously pursue that desire until 1998. That’s when I took my first dance class in Brooklyn.

After my first class, I was in love with the dance. It made me feel the one thing the other dances could not help me to feel-I felt like a dancer. I felt graceful, elegant, and powerful. Initially, I felt awkward because I thought being skinny and having no hips would not translate well in this hip-dropping, full-figured women’s dance. However doing the dance still felt right to me. Then I saw Tarik Sultan dance and he became my inspiration. He looked just as graceful, elegant, and powerful as all the women I had seen dancing and I thought if he could do it, so could I.

After doing Middle Eastern dance for about six months, something in me began to change. I began to heal from “being skinny”. No longer did I think my body was less than because it was skinny. Instead I saw the beauty in my form and in my grace, and the way my body looked when I danced. No longer did I stare enviously at other women’s bodies. Instead I saw myself as one representative of the myriad of women’s bodies-equally as beautiful as the others. No longer did I feel the need to pick apart my body. Instead I was able to look at my whole body and be comfortable in my own skin.

Through this dance I was able to be a dancer. Through this dance I was able to be a choreographer. Through this dance, I was able to express myself creatively without stress or shame. Through this dance I was able to accept myself. I let go of the self-judgement because I was dancing with women of all different sizes.

Now I perform with a Middle Eastern Dance troupe and have danced alongside some of the most amazing professional and amateur dancers. I appreciate how all sizes look beautiful doing this dance and it makes me happy to be a part of such an open and inviting community of dancers.