Reviving Ophelia Through Belly dance
Does belly dance offer women a more positive self image?
by Delilah
• Preface
• The image we are sold
• Television
• Boobs
• Plastic Surgery in General
• Ballet Thindustrial Complex
• What Belly Dance Can Offer
Reviving Ophelia Through Belly Dance
PREFACE:
This is an updated version of an article originally written in 1998. It is written for all women, but with the adolescent girl and young woman especially in mind. In this article I will explore how our body image is sold to us by commercial forces. I will discuss violence, pressure and control issues, eating disorders, self destructive behavior, plastic surgery, boob jobs, television, ballet, tattoos. . . . I do mean to explore these issues. But I don’t want to sound like I have the answers or come across as too preachy. Rather, I hope to express my concerns and illuminate the issues. These are difficult issues to grapple with, but I implore us all to consciously think about them.
I suggest we can guard our sense of positive self esteem by truly inhabiting our own bodies. Through my 20 years of teaching women to belly dance, I find I’m really teaching them how to reclaim lost parts of themselves. This is cause for celebration; hoot and holler! How did we get so lost? I have found that it is this opportunity of rediscovery that women all over the globe love about this dance form — the belly dance. The chance to open up, love, feel and reacquaint themselves with their own hips, butts, belly, breasts, face. . . the women that come to my classes mostly whole, seek a way to keep themselves from falling apart.
Some belly dance classes are structured in the competitive manner using classical ballet as their map of approach, but I don’t believe this is the majority. Belly dance tends to be much more community minded and this is a good thing. The current way in which much of the art of belly dance is taught and cultivated in America today gives women a healthy knowledge and acceptance of self. The belly dance is not about placating men or competing with other women for a night with the sultan. The belly dance has been performed and shared by women, for other women, for centuries. It is a sisterhood of shared relationships to the experience of life. You can be any age, any shape, any color, any body and belly dance!
The image we are sold
Those of us raising adolescent girls in today's society are aware of the cultural crisis affecting young women's personal growth and self identity. A best selling book, “Reviving Ophelia,” by Mary Pipher Ph.D, gives light and testament to this crisis. The book takes its title from the Ophelia of Shakespeare's “Hamlet,” who is destroyed by her loss of self. Dr Pipher offers parents compassion, strength and strategies for helping revive our young women's lost sense of self. It's very frightening. Among American girls there is more depression, eating disorders, addictions, self-mutilations and suicides than ever before! And boys are not immune to these things either.
You don't have to have children to know the stresses and pressures on our identity as women at any age in this culture. There is a bit of Ophelia in all of us that needs reviving. What is our self image? When asked, most women will say they need to lose weight — often even the skinny ones. We live in a media-saturated society. Advertising messages are aimed at making us feel dissatisfied so we'll buy something to feel better! We are targets for product image, and brand name associations at a very early age. McDonald's has weaseled its way into the elementary school systems, establishing their product identity for life when children come home with coupons for French fries as a reward for good grades. Yes, this really happens! What kind of values and behaviors does this promote? The powerful images on TV, in movies and magazines can throw us into obsessions and insecurities about our looks, age, weight, and economic or professional status. Ignored are real values such as nourishing our creative spirits, practicing compassion and care-taking of our families, communities, and our earth.
Television
I’m going to rant a bit here, a bit about television. No one wants to admit our so-called “free TV” is part of the problem. I hope you’ll forgive me, but someone has to remind us of these things once in a while . Our parents won’t because they are too busy watching it. Me included, . . .thus the next few paragraphs.
Sex and violence lead the parade on television and in movies. Jerry Mander, author of the well-known books "In Absence of the Sacred" and "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television" tells us how and why guns, car chases, sex and competitive sports are so prevalent. Television is basically a flat and boring medium which is "far better suited technically to expressing hate, anger, jealousy, winning, wanting and violence... which can be conveyed solely through broad-based body movements and blatant sexual imagery... The subtleties of love and intimacy of relations are simply not as easy to convey." TV keeps us tuned in by depending on a narrow scope of exaggerated subject stimuli that is riveting when treated with fast action and 1 to 2 second cuts. Commercial TV's aim is to keep you from touching that dial (or remote), so you'll buy their advertisers' products. It is the technology and industry of advertising you are watching for free. Thus, we have program after program; cops and robbers, cops and robbers, cops and robbers! All manipulating us with sex and violence, much of it violence against women.
Watching television is not a real activity. We watch the football game, or we watch the sexy dancer on MTV, but we aren’t playing the game, or doing the dance. We are sitting on the coach, day after day, night after night. . . Hello? We go to the restaurant and a large screen TV is blaring at us. Can you even taste your food? We go to the airport and the TV has our attention, but we usually can’t even hear the soundtrack. TVs are in cars now, too. We can’t escape them. And we will always be drugged!
Many of us are very numb. Shock value is measured, for the advertiser, by a momentary seasonal rating. The ante was raised faster and faster in the past decade by more and more juvenile permissiveness: MTV, South Park, Howard Stern, the Men's Show. . . using, nudity, sex, and potty talk. Its end result is a social climate that tolerates more and more rude behaviors. These are the days of rudeness. Manners seem to be a thing of the past. And I have to ask, isn’t this too a result of people living outside of their bodies. If we are not in our bodies, then how can we be considerate of other bodies.
Television is a persuasive medium and it does shape our thinking.This knowledge has not been lost to politics and government propaganda, not whatsoever. As Noam Chomsky said, propaganda is as simple as a water pump. It’s a tool to deliver water, good or bad. But the medium of TV is overwhelming because we believe what we see. Even when we know better. TV is an edited medium — the more it’s edited the more power it has over us.
We watch and consume TV as a society, and we also use TV as an unchecked babysitter. Teachers pull out the VCR and set kids in front of the screen all the time. My kids had 5 to 6 teachers a day. There were days when all teachers used TV as a babysitter. Then these same kids came home, and exhausted over-worked parents turned on the TV, too. Think about how much TV that means per day, per week.
Commercial TV has many attributes of a drug: it removes you from your bodily awareness, alters your consciousness, yet causes symptoms of anxiety and depression later. We are poisoning ourselves with fear and disease and sabotaging our future by these disturbing imbalances. We feel powerless, but we're not. We have to use our power, and make choices!
This isn’t easy. One wants to believe that television has a redeeming side, but it’s been here for a long time now. We can argue that the picture quality has improved, along with the increased negative symptoms it delivers. But it will never be less of a drug. I don’t know what the alternative is, accept to stay aware and make sure you have good books coming into your house on a regular basis! Enroll in an exercise class on week nights and go for walks in the park and community; write, paint, sew, build a playhouse, do something!
Fashion
With all this said, I do not mean to sound like a fanatic. I do not argue that the art of adornment/fashion, our human sexuality, or our concerns with weight are to be disregarded because they are abused issues. They are all important aspects of holistic personal growth. But issues of beauty and sexuality need to be addressed in terms of values, creativity, self-expression, and self-respect. If we are just following some fad prescribed to us, what good is that? One’s approach should be a meaningful ritual.
Obesity
We must be realistic in our goals and expectations. America does have an obesity problem that needs to be addressed. Obesity is not a healthy situation for anyone. Once in it, one suffers from suffocating guilt, loneliness and panic. The factors that cause obesity are omnipresent in our society. All our foods are full of sugar, whether processed or purchased at a fast food franchise. Even a simple carton of cottage cheese can have sugar in it! It’s a battle trying to eat healthy, especially if you are in a hurry, or don’t have access to quality food stores, or enough money to buy it. Our lifestyles have made so many demands on us that families find in hard to share a meal together. So, the factors spiral out of our personal control. Well, then they need to be addressed by society as a whole. We need to address the issue as a caring community and not point the finger at our neighbor’s fat. In fact, we need to love our neighbor’s fat. Only then can we embrace our own love handles. (LINK see article)
Mutilation and Eating Disorders
Conditions of healing, compassion and health should be nurtured in terms of our connections to the environment, each other and ourselves. What works against us is a sense of identity displacement, created by the fear, chaos, and confusion carried by television and many technologies of the 20th century. Was there ever a time in recent history when women were whole and independently sound in body, mind, and spirit? Maybe in some Atlantian terms. Or, perhaps, we are becoming closer and it will emerge in the near future. One can only hope.
The assault on women's bodies and self-image is not new. We have inherited a widespread, centuries-old tradition of fear and loathing of the body molded church and synagogue. We have been taught and threatened to distrust, to stay ignorant to our own female bodies and to manipulate our body shapes and appearances to suit fashion or other cultural requirements. But do we need to perpetuate the destructive aspects of this "tradition"? . . . Corsets, feet binding, genital mutilation, neck rings, and ballet (more on ballet later). If we are fully in our bodies, and knowing every part of them as sacred and beautiful, would we make these choices?
Adolescence is a time of discovering who we, are and in today's world that is no easy task. According to Dr. Pipher, a clinical psychologist who has treated girls for more than 20 years, "Despite the advances of feminism, escalating levels of sexism and violence — from undervalued intelligence to sexual harassment in elementary school — cause girls to stifle their creative spirit and natural impulses which, ultimately, destroys their self esteem." Yes, elementary school sexual harassment is going on, and it's downright scary! Where do you think the boys and girls get it? TV!
When we are not truly in our bodies, we can't feel things, thus we have no emotional life, and we become numb. We don't know what it is to be hungry or satisfied. The phenomenon of body mutilation is a desperate attempt to feel something. When we can't feel our own love for ourselves, how can we believe anyone else would love us? Thus, suicide becomes a way out of the empty world of non-feeling. The gifts and pleasures of sustenance may become a refuge — but they could also become an enemy.
The world of eating disorders affects all ages, but is rampant among young women these days. These disorders are multi-layered and complex. Anorexia nervosa, the disease of starving oneself, is a progressive disorder. It is a distorted way of having power and control over one's body and protesting the dictates of society's rules of thinness and beauty messages. A girl becomes so skinny she gets ugly. All she knows is that she's winning the battle for some sort of control. Anorexics are usually perfectionists by nature. This disorder is the hardest to treat and has the highest fatality rate.
Bulimia, binging and then forcing oneself to throw up, is an eating disorder that arises from the preoccupations of eating, purging (by vomiting or by use of laxatives), and weight fluctuation. Binging and purging are addictive behaviors; food is the narcotic and the body becomes habituated. Bulimics are often attractive and vivacious, they are the homecoming queens, class presidents, and high achievers that, underneath their cheerful smiles, harbor this secret disease. .
Modeling Industry?
 Bridget chose the subject of belly dance for her senior project and enrolled in my class. (see an article on Bridget) When I asked 17-year-old Bridget Jordan what her favorite aspects of belly dance were, her answer brought a hopeful sign to these troubled waters. She asserts that belly dance has given her a positive self-image. She is very aware of the tragedies facing her generation. With the enthusiastic support of her mother, Lassie Jordon, she choose to address these issues. Bridget and her mother told me of a report they read about modeling agencies in Europe courting patients of anorexia clinics with modeling contracts! Campaigns have been launched by women's groups in protest of Calvin Kline’s use of model Kate Moss, whom some believe to be anorexic. As part of an awareness campaign the Fat Chance Belly Dance in San Francisco sold buttons bearing the slogan, "Goddesses Have Hips". The proceeds went to the "About Face" campaign against unhealthy imagery of women.
Look through the major high-fashion magazines and you’ll find the images of 13-year-old girls disguised as grown women selling makeup and skin care to older woman and their daughters. These girls often look beat up, angry, drugged and depressed. Haven’t you ever noticed? Is this our idea of esthetics? Is this what we aspire to? Hardly anyone ever smiles! This is not to suggest we need to see fake little smiles on everyone all the time, but what's with the depression? Do these images depict how girls are feeling these days, or are these magazines causing it? Doesn't anyone in the industry have a social consciousness toward women? The answer is yes. There are more magazines today than there were 10 years ago promoting a healthier image. Oprah certainly is an improvement. However, the main titles on the covers at the check stands are about weight loss and ab exercises. We are singly minded in our insecure obsessions and the magazines know it. In fact, they feed it.
We have to remember if we feel great, maybe we don't have a reason to buy another dress today. So there is a reason to this treason. It’s called sales, money, consumerism and marketing. Seduction by destruction is another way to put it. Again, my intention is to encourage you to stay aware, stay awake, know when you are being manipulated!
My daughter went away to Evergreen State College in Washington state. The campus is located in a very natural woodland environment with a fairly politically strong and conscious student body. There, she was able to turn off the flow of commercial imagery aimed at women. She reported she felt dramatically more self confident and a happier sense of well being. She was relieved of the stress of constantly comparing her curvy body to the skinny, man-like body adopted by fashion model industry. I don’t mean that my daughter divorced herself from the art of self adornment. She is very much into clothes and makeup to an avant garde degree! What I’ve noticed and admired about what she chooses for her adornments, is that her choices are derived from her inner-directed sense of self, which she confidently expresses. She is freer than many. However, she said when she returned to “civilization”, she could feel the encroachment of these commercial images returning. She started feeling anxious again.
When we look in the mirror and compare our own images, we too often forget that this perfect, barely-pubescent-beauty has been manufactured, photographically enhanced, and touched up! Pounds, blemishes, and dental work can be removed. Eyes are whitened, skin tones are leveled, lips are fattened and inner thighs vanish. We do not have to match to these images to be loved. We do not have to envy them. Remember, we don’t even have to look at them. However, don’t start hating them either! Any time you spend in that department is really about self loathing. Stay clear of it! If the images upset you, be aware of it and find a positive activity to fill your mind.
Liposuction
Clinics are full of girls having their inner thighs "done" trying to mimic these photographically-enhanced images. If you think liposuction is for you, read some articles on the net. They take you step-by-step through the procedure. Areas that are suctioned won't regenerate fat cells. But be aware that if there is a weight gain after the procedure, other areas which don't normally harbor fat will get bigger — the fat has to go somewhere! What a weird picture that creates in my mind. If you do decide to do something like this, I hope you spend a lot of time researching every aspect and not just the slick promotion the plastic surgeon presents to you as authoritative. Do your own investigation and go on-line. Ask people who are living with the surgeries for more than 20 months. Meet with them if you can. See for yourself.
Boobs
Our breasts should be symbols of nurture and sustenance. Today our breasts are either too big, too small, or the wrong shape . All to often, it’s women who are unhappy with their own breast, not men! Talking to women who have undergone breast enhancement cured me of any inclination to have it done. Just about everyone I know has had problems. I knew three women who went to the same doctor. One wanted large breasts, another wanted just a little enhancement. All three got the same size: large! It made me think the doctor either likes big boobs or the saline bags only come in one size. Another friend's implants hardened so much she had to have very painful breast massage work to break up the scar tissue which formed around the implants. After a year and a half of pain, she had them removed, to her great relief! She is so sorry she ever did it. It certainly was not her husband’s idea, nor was he in support of it to begin with. Now she lives with unnecessary scars and a hard-learned lesson she can describe and pass on to other women. Just buy yourself some good padding. It’s so such safer.
The movies in your head are not really in your bed.
The other thing about implants is the risk of reduction in sensation in one's nipples, something I personally would not be willing to trade! Many woman say that’s not a big deal as far as they are concerned. I have a little confession to share. I didn’t have much sensitivity in my nipples in my 20s it wasn’t until after I had children and into my 30s that I became aware of this pleasure. That hormone process must have triggered something. If I had made a decision from breast augmentation in my 20s I would never have known. I could have chosen big boobs and been the fantasy of other men's dreams and been a big fake in bed when it came to real sexual awareness. When we run those movies in our head, we have to remember they aren't real. Those ideas lodged in our heads when our guard was weak and we didn’t consciously choose them.
Then, there is the issue of breast feeding, one of my most cherished motherhood experiences. I have always shared a very close bond with my two daughters. None of my friends who had breast implants nursed their babies. I don't know if it's even possible, though I think the doctors will say it is. I'm afraid most of them will say anything on their way to the bank. They claim to be experts in the newest procedures. But think for a moment. The newest procedures haven't been time-tested; if they are new how much experience can anyone have? YOU, my darling are their prospective experiential testing ground! Sign here.
In October 1998, a young person's radio station in Seattle, KUBE-FM, backed a promotional scheme by a local physician, Dr. Antonio Mangubat, who ran ads about his contest at a local shopping mall. All you had to do was physically qualify and you could win a set of new boobs! The operation would be shown on the internet! Articles followed in the newspapers as public outrage grew — from women, feminists, parents, and the associated medical profession. A comment by the radio station's program director, Eric Powers, showed a serious lack of regard: "We've done this sort of controversial promotion before and it didn't hurt our ratings, we speak the language of the listener." Can you believe it? What a boob!
Plastic Surgery in General
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not down on all plastic surgery and I really do respect people’s choices once they are adults. How we look does effect how we feel and plastic surgery can be a life-saver for the truly disfigured and the truly unhappy. I just want women, and particularly girls, to think it over carefully, and research any procedure before jumping into it. It's important to be aware of the psychological repercussions and side effects. Most important, look at what attitudes we buy into. Be sure the issue of the crooked nose or small breasts would not be served best by a therapist helping you work on a stronger sense of self-acceptance before seeking the surgeon's scalpel. If you’ve done all that and have your mind made up, then that can be just as liberating.
Ballet Thindustrial Complex
A young ballerina, named Heidi Guenther, died of anorexia. Anne-Marie Holmes; director of the Boston ballet told one reporter that in telling Gunther to lose some weight, she had thought at the time, "Well, she was kind of chunky." National Public Radio did a story on Heidi Gunther and the representatives from the ballet company admitted “to-be-lean” is required. It is simply too difficult to meet the demands of this dance with weight, they claim. The weight that is problematic is women's weight: thighs, breasts, bellies, hips and buttocks. My contention about ballet is that it is a dance of unfeminine and unnatural demands on the human body, yet it is the most respected, idolized and highly funded dance form there is! It does not represent the freedom of the human spirit, but rather bondage and control over the feminine! Individually, and as a society, we need to think hard about this. We need to take some of that corporate money away from ballet and put it into things that empower the greatest number of women.
What Belly Dance Can Offer
Once those unfamiliar with belly dance get past the stereotypical myth that often gets perpetuated along side of it, a whole world opens up. I sometimes wonder if the misguided stereotypes weren’t concocted as a conspiracy by society to keep hidden the empowering values this dance form offers women. The myth is shaped by the idea that this dance was something naughty women do to tempt and placate men (nurses, stewardesses, maids and collage students get a belly of these stereotypic images, too). Something about this dance, I think, sometimes frightens men, so there is a need to confine it or belittle it’s power. Could it be because belly dance does not require a partner. It’s a solo dance. It’s about a self-fulfilling expression of one’s own life.
To many, there is a rich feminine antiquity associated with its image, one that projects world heritage and a long lost esoteric past. These powers are due to be returned to us. The simple truth is that this is a beautiful dance art honoring life and the feminine experience (which has been for centuries and still is supported and enjoyed mostly by women. A good example: all the belly dance magazines are supported by women). When women get the wisdom of this truth then a whole world opens up to them. Woman = Body = Vessel = World.
Like with anything, approaches can vary, so you'll need to shop around. But, what belly dance can offer women is a chance to be in their bodies, physically, emotionally, spiritually, and creatively. These opportunities are diminishing in our society as we spend so much time sitting at the computer or in front of the TV. Physical Education in the public schools is very diminished compared to when I was in school. And people are working harder and longer hours. We all need to exercise, yet finding the time isn't easy. What belly dance has to offer over the local aerobics class is fantasy, creativity, an energetic workout as well as a sense of play that is so essential to staying young at heart. Belly dance provides us the opportunity to meet physical challenges that give us a sense of achievement, skill and control over our bodies, and we learn to move our uniquely women's bodies gracefully.
There are many styles of belly dance to enjoy and experience. It opens us up to many different cultural experiences and broadens our sense of the world. We make many new friends. Through the dance, we celebrate life in all its wide diversity. We express ourselves through costuming, music, and movement in unlimited ways. We learn to connect with our physical energies, our environment, to each other and to feel a place in community. The growth of our awareness, through practice and skill, experienced in this dance directly correlates to the personal growth of our life cycles. Every dancing step of the way teaches us more about who we are. We learn to take risks through performance and witness each other by supportive watching. The sisterhood of belly dance embraces women of all ages, colors, shapes, sizes and personalities. It's a dance that will last a woman her entire lifetime if she wants it to. Each stage of a woman's life brings something unique: The strength and agile beauty of youth, to the zophtic, sensual nurturance and wealth of experience in midlife, to the wise woman cultivated by charisma and maturity, and much more.
 Personally, I've found that belly dance has been such a powerful counseling factor for my own body image issues over the years. The experience of this dance has taught me about so many life issues. I've married and birthed two daughters and kept dancing. I started when I was 18 and I never dreamed I'd still be at it more than 25 years later, and still impassioned about it. The women that were my elders and teachers then, are still dancing strong (see article about Lois Postel). There is a strong sisterhood. The women that are in their 50s, 60s, and 70s give me all my strength and courage to keep dancing in the shadow of this society's disempowerment of older women. I'll be doing this dance even in my aluminum walker!
I truly believe that belly dance can be a wonderful experience for the young and old women of today. They will learn more from it than just the moves. More importantly, they will learn to accept more diversity in their bodies and the bodies of other women. The standard of beauty will come from real, holistic values and not from the self-serving needs of commercial intents and dictates.
Pass This On
If you know a young woman — or an older one — who could use this in her life, send her this article!
Two Rituals of Empowerment (coming soon)
• Gift of a Woman’s Body
• Awakening Aphrodite
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