Body acceptance in my burlesque classes

I focus on body acceptance over body positivity in my classes and in my practice.

What’s the big difference? Do I even care?

It might not make a big difference to you or to your experience if you engage with me online or in a face-to-face class or show.

But I know body confidence and burlesque are often thrown in a big melting pot together.

First lets say that I love it if someone is doing burlesque (or any activity) and finds as a result that they feel more confident in themselves.

I’ve had amazing feedback from students saying that they find themselves confident in many ways: standing taller, feeling less socially anxious, making friends, embracing moving their body. Generally experiencing those feel good happy vibes.

I love hearing that.

However not everyone gets those vibes at a class. Or at least not everyday.

One of the things I always want to bring to my teaching is kindness and empathy.

I often use the trite line of “speak to yourself the way you would your best friend”

What I mean more deeply this is – analyse your own feeling about yourself and your appearance. 

If a friend was feeling a bit down, you would look at them with the eyes you see them as – the beautiful human they are, all the amazing things that make them the unique person that you love.

You probably would also remind them not to be so hard on themselves.

You might also encourage them reflect on the external pressures that drive those feelings about their physical appearance.

Because there is an inherent pressure that we have inherited to want to look a particular way.

Looking in the mirror and feeling that ‘ugly’ is staring back at us is something that is reinforced through a myriad of experiences in our culture that sets a particular, unrealistic and unattainable, standard of beauty.

Intellectually a lot of us know this.

Yet still we seem to hold ourselves to this higher standard and impossible ideas of beauty.

This constant dialogue makes it hard to flick the switch to ‘love’ your body.

And maybe doing that every day is unrealistic.  (Does anyone else immediately get the totally white, hetero Dove commercials in their mind?)  

It also keeps driving back to a place that we our body is something so important to our self worth.  

One of my students put this super eloquently as “if my weight or my body is the most important thing, I’m thinking about then I need to reframe my priorities”.

What I like to remind anyone of in any class setting, is that we can think about how we feel

 It can be hard to feel positive or overtly confident all the time.

Sometimes a starting point can be to thinking about how a movement feels; how it feels to dance; how it feels to be present in class how it feels to stand with good posture.

You don’t have to immediately feel ‘sexy’.

I love when that is a longer-term outcome.  But I know that is a hard ask – especially if you’ve come into a burlesque class feeling less than confident.  

Instead, challenge yourself to remember the benefits of being in a class. I hope that you reframe a conversation in your own mind about what is beautiful and what is sexy/

Further reading I recommend on this topic:

Jessamyn Stanley “Work of Body Acceptance” (Yes this is an article on GOOP but persevere anyway. I LOVE Jessamyn and this is great) .  You could also pick up her book “Every Body Yoga”

Bustle, “The Difference Between Body Positivity, Neutrality & Acceptance” - Just a good general cohesive wrap up!

Roxanne Gay, “Hunger” - This is just the best read. It will change your perspective forever more.

Sonya Renee Taylor, “The Boy is Not an Apology”

Please leave your reading recommendations below too! I have a nice big stack that I’m keen to add to.

Support

If you need support for body image issues and/or disordered eating please try and reach out to The Butterfly Foundation.