COMMON ANSWERS DEBUNKED
by Arielle Juliette
Occasionally, I get emails from Quora, a website where anyone can ask any question they like, and one came up that asked, "why do belly dancers have weight around the middle?"
Among a number of good responses that stated belly dancers come in an array of sizes and it's an art form that accepts a wider variety of bodies than most dance styles, there was one which had a number of culturally-accepted responses that held so many falsehoods in need of debunking. The respondent answered,
"I remember taking a belly dancing class from an overweight instructor once. I surmised that she didn't do much else for working out aside from teaching her belly dance classes and maybe some performances. Or maybe she didn't follow a clean, healthy diet. Hard to say, Just remember that diet is usually key to how healthy and slim a person looks, so even if she did lots of performances, if her diet was off, that could explain her larger appearance (unless she suffered from a medical condition)."
As a belly dance instructor and performer with a soft midsection, I'd like to break this down. Here are some things you cannot tell from my or anyone else's appearance:
-How much exercise a person does
-What amount of physical activity a person is capable of
-What type of food a person eats
-How much food a person eats
-Whether they have a medical condition that affects body shape and size
A person's diet, activities, size, weight, and health are not measures of their worth as a human or whether or not they should be dancing. Large bodies exist, and they exist in people who eat a variety of foods and do a variety of exercise. There doesn't need to be an "explanation" for why someone doesn't exist in a small body. Humans come in a wide variety of sizes and shapes, and comments like these create real-world bias against those who don't fit the cultural "ideal". This type of ideology perpetuates antifat bias that keeps many people from being able to find clothing in their size (or at all) , from being able to fit in public spaces, from being able to have medical procedures (for example, MRI machines have weight limits that exclude a large segment of the human population), from getting (or even seeking) medical care, and from getting paid equally. The list doesn’t stop here, either.
Diet is NOT key to how a body looks. We could all eat exactly the same things, in the exact same quantities, at exactly the same time, and we would all still come in a variety of sizes and shapes. How our bodies are shaped and sized comes down largely to genetics and the conditions under which we live. While most people are capable of manipulating their body weight to some extent for a small amount of time through restriction, only a tiny percentage of people will maintain that weight loss longer than 2-5 years. The small minority of individuals who do maintain weight loss are not only statistical unicorns, but usually make it their life’s work to keep the weight off- often becoming fitness instructors, trainers or nutrition “coaches,” or dedicating much of their time to managing their food and exercise intake. Our bodies have a set point, "the range (5-20 pounds) where our bodies thrive and don’t fight against any subtle change", and there are a number of mechanisms that our bodies employ to get us to stay in that set point range. According to dietitian Sydney Bates (and many other nutrition and medical professionals),
“[Our bodies] will slow metabolism to conserve energy, reduce fullness signals, and increase the drive to eat. The body interprets dieting, AKA any attempt to shrink or control body size, as starvation. Hence, our caveman brains signal that there is scarcity- leading to activation of these sophisticated mechanisms to bring the body back to the natural set point.”
All of our set points are different, and despite what the BS BMI scale says, here is no one size or small category of weights that humans ought to come in. Furthermore, there's no such thing as "good" and "bad" foods, and moralizing something with no inherent moral value is what fuels eating disorders and low self-esteem. This standard narrative that this responder brings up is homogeneous and toxic, saying that health and fitness only looks like someone who eats with enough "discipline" to create a slim, toned, able body. This is a fantasy propelled by a mega billion dollar industry which has everything to gain from the general population believing our bodies are problems to be fixed. Not to mention the numerous people who will never be “healthy” due to chronic illnesses and conditions, no matter how much they restrict and exercise.
So, to answer the question, "why do some belly dancers have weight around the middle?" I would say, because that is a natural variety of human body shape. There's no way to look at a person and gauge their levels of health, and frankly, it's not important to be able to. Splitting bodies into "healthy" and "unhealthy", "worthy" and "unworthy" negatively effects us all, especially those who are already living a marginalized existence.
There's hardly a more villainized part of the body than the belly, and belly dance is one of the few art forms where we can celebrate all kinds of torsos, and the beauty that all torsos can create. Some humans, including me, are just naturally soft in the middle, some of us very soft, and there is nothing wrong with that. The only thing that's wrong is what we have been taught about soft bodies. If we can find the beauty and worthiness in rolling hills, in folds of sand underwater, in the shivering of water as wind blows over it, in the dotted constellations above us, we can find the beauty in how many of our bodies mimic natural landscapes, both in dance and in stillness. There is beauty to be found in every body. There is worth in all sizes. A person doesn't need to fit our culture's narrow idea of "health" to have value. Our worth is inherent in our humanity. The more we can make space for every size and for every health level, ESPECIALLY and most importantly for the most marginalized bodies in our society, the better and more dignified lives we'll all be able to lead.