Andrea ForgacsDancer
Portrait by Andrea Forgacs
I’ll tell you a story about a little girl
Who forgot how it felt
To own her body.
I was once a dancer
Pointe shoes and white lace
Hair orchestrated just so
I saw in the mirror a version of myself
That was unafraid
I spun until my feet threatened to bleed
Lauded my blisters as trophies
I used to count every callous
Instead of sheep
And, as I slept,
I saw stages and stars.
So when did I begin to dream in grayscale?
Perhaps it was when my costume stood out
Because my teacher refused to order an outfit in my size
She said,
“You must understand, that girls your age
Look like girls,
Not teens.”
I was seven.
I never told my mom why I stopped dancing
I scrubbed away at my callouses
Hoping
That if I rubbed hard enough
some of myself might go too.
I wanted to be a dancer.
Everywhere I looked, my world became miniature
As if I was a life sized doll
Confined to Barbie’s Dreamhouse
Soon it became less tiresome to simply stop moving.
Tiny doors stronger than any bars
Plastic floors threatened to collapse under my weight
Hands too large to dust play furniture and so
Barbie left too.
Her home gone to ruin
Just like my pointe shoes.
Trapped inside my miniature world,
I lost my sense of time
So when my father told me
I ought to eat fewer sweets
I batted one eye
Swallowed my pride
And wrote a note on my skin:
Eating seems to be a private exercise unless you are thin.
Once I understood the unwritten rules
Life became easier
Or so I thought
I donned a uniform of long sleeves
And loose pants
Never stretched too far toward the sky in PE
Lest my stomach tell too many stories
About what I ate the night before.
As we reached for our toes
I cursed my ankles
For their lack of hallowed corners
Clung to the sides of crowded hallways
Afraid to take up too much space.
By age ten, I no longer myself unafraid
In the mirror
I saw a ghost.
I wanted to be a dancer.
I didn’t realize
You don’t need a costume to dance.
Sometimes I still forget.
Story by @bbhowie
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