Men in a Tights Situation - Lauren Perrett Explores the Stereotypes of Male Ballet Dancers Being Gay

Task 4: Feature Article

MEN IN A TIGHTS SITUATION

Lauren Perrett explores the stereotypes of male ballet dancers being gay.

Football is for boys, ballet is for girls. If a guy does ballet; he is gay. The ways that all male ballet dancers have been constructed as effeminate and homosexual has gotten worse within our generation. Many high school boys who have told their friends in secret that they have been attending ballet classes as an after school activity lose those friends and end up leaving school. The school kids do not realise the blood, sweat and tears people put into ballet. It is more physically demanding than most sports and the hour’s dancers put into their training is more than an Olympic athlete, and that is a lot. They sacrifice so much. They basically skip childhood and work for their career from a young age and do not get a proper teen social life. Ballet dancers have a higher pain threshold than most sports people so when they are injured, they keep doing it because they love it more than anything in this world.

Female ballet dancers have their turns en Pointe and very technical but graceful dances, and male ballet dancers have their grand allegro and the hard work of partnering their partner. You may have heard the saying “Do you even lift?” which is implying that you do not do weights and do not have good strength and is used a lot towards people who are quite slender or flamboyant and it is also used to mock male ballet dancers. It is quite humorous when you think about what male dancers actually do and the amount of lifting they do. The thing is they are not lifting weights, they are lifting women which make them more of a man but people outside of the dance world will not realise this.

In the ballet world, the relationships within a dance school are inseparable. They are the people you have trained with from such a young age and they know and understand everything you go through, physically and mentally. No-one is judged and it is uncommon to be accused of being gay and weak because you all do the same thing. But ballet does have its very competitive aspects as well. Who can do the most pirouettes? Who can leap the highest? Who is the tallest? Skinniest? And so forth. This can either give the ballet environment a fun and exciting atmosphere and make everyone aim for higher goals or it can make things very negative. When it turns negative, issues can get out of hand. Because most people do not understand the ballet world completely, stereotypes can spiral out of control causing bigger