On stage the dancers glide effortlessly with grace across the floor, each movement a celebration of their strength and creativity. Young girls participating in ballet where every class feels like a fairy-tale, where the music and movement create something magical. Dance has always been celebrated as the art of control, every pirouette a study of elegance and poise.

Parents enrolling their young daughters into ballet because all they’ve dreamed of is being a pretty ballerina, wearing costumes and pink uniforms, not realising they’ve enrolled their children into something not always about artistry, but weight.

Off-stage those same performers count calories, chasing an ideal that leaves them anxious, weak, and hungry.

“No one wants to see a ballerina with heavy thighs.” It’s a statement whispered in dressing rooms and echoed in studios everywhere, so deeply embedded in dance culture that generations of young dancers have come to associate thinness with skill. Why does this awful situation persist in 2025?

The culture in many studios and organisations is largely unchanged, despite decades of research that links eating problems to dance and gymnastics. Silence about eating, strict beauty standards, and body shaming continue to influence the next generation of performers.

In a study on the Prevalence of eating disorders amongst dancers, it was found that approximately one in eight dancers experience an eating disorder or disordered eating and one in six ballet dancers. The Australian Institute of Sport recognised dance as being one of the sports with an increased risk of eating disorders.

A 2025 study found that dancers, especially in aesthetic/lean body focused disciplines such as ballet and gymnastics have higher risk than dancers and athletes in non-aesthetic sports.

These statistics should have been a turning point for the dance community. Instead, they serve as proof that change is long overdue.

Thirty years ago, at age 17, Jenine Lawlor should have been celebrating the height of her cheerleading career. Instead, she found herself the subject of national headlines – not for her talent, but her body. Weighing just 52 kilograms, Jenine was pulled aside by her coach and was told that unless she lost weight, she’d be dropped from the squad.

These comments didn’t stay behind closed doors. Soon, the story was splashed across newspapers and television, reducing a teenage girl’s years of training and dedication to a number on a scale.

“I was really mad about it so I wrote a letter to the local paper in Townsville saying my piece with it and that’s how the story got picked up. After that it started to get a bit crazy, I was getting requests for radio interviews at school, and was on A Current Affair,” she says.  

Lawlor was slandered in the news with national articles being titled ‘Too Chubby To Cheer.’ As a 17-year-old already dealing with body image issues, hearing your peers and community criticising you based on your weight makes an already difficult period even worse.

“I just wanted it to go away. At 17, you’re constantly questioning yourself anyway, you don’t even know where to put your arms half the time. Every time I had a conversation with someone, particularly meeting someone new, the conversation was about my weight, which I’d like to stop having,” she says.

Dance and cheerleading has turned into something more about the aesthetics of the dancers and performers, rather than something adolescent girls are doing for fun and fitness.

As a teen, Jenine faced the same realisation that most dancers and performers do, understanding that the way they perform isn’t just targeted towards how they feel dancing, but how others view them and their bodies.

“It was a bit of a reality check for me because naive Jenine at 16, joining a cheer squad, was all about the dancing, wearing costumes and getting to do what I love. But at that point when everything unfolded about my weight, I realised that this is about people wanting to look at women and their bodies,” she says.

The harsh criticism put on young female dancers by the industry, peers and themselves can often affect their mental and physical health. For Jenine, she recounted becoming more interested in feminism because of how she was being portrayed as a young girl.

“The whole experience made a real feminist of me. I would have already considered myself one but body positivity wasn’t really a thing at the time, and I was really challenging a long-accepted status quo. I became very aware of how much women’s lives are dictated by men’s standards,” she says.

Even though Jenine’s story took place in the 1990s, the difficulties she talks about are very much present today. Young dancers are still being subjected to the same scrutiny. Jenine’s harm was caused by the harsh spotlight of national news, but for others, it frequently occurs more subtly in the form of whispered remarks from peers, teachers, and social media that has an equally devastating impact.

Samantha Dewar, a 21-year-old ex-gymnast and dancer from Perth, battled with unhealthy eating habits for most of her gym and dance career due to the harsh expectations of the industry.

“I started noticing changes with my relationship with food in about year 10, and that’s when I was doing quite a lot of dance, and in between doing exams and ATAR, dance was my escape, so when I had that added stress of not liking how I look and how I dance compared to other people, I just stopped eating.”

Samantha’s story is heartbreaking in its familiarity. Despite there being 30 years between Jenine and Samantha, the undertone is painfully alike. In her video, Samantha describes the same pressures as being scrutinised for her body rather than her ability.

Claire Gasper is a dietician who specialises in eating disorders. She says people can die from physical complications that come with them.

“Dancers’ nutrition needs are very high, particularly of our carbohydrate-containing foods, which is what gives your body and brain energy. So, dancers and performers need more fuel in the day for all the movement they’re doing,” she says.

“It sounds quite scary, but people die from physical complications from eating disorders. One of the things we’re especially concerned about with anorexia, for example, is someone having a heart attack. That’s one of the leading causes of death, so all the organs and systems in the body are affected by starvation.”

One of the main challenges affecting ballet dancers’ eating habits and how they view their weight is due to the immense focus on the aesthetics around the performance. There is a certain pressure to look slim and maintain a lower weight.

Sadly, a widely known stigma, almost stereotype, is that you can’t be happy if you aren’t skinny. Body positivity has begun to grow in the media and how companies approach advertising. However, the dance community is still decades behind where the rest of the world is with accepting all body types.

“For parents and maybe coaches or teachers, I think it’s important that they understand that dancing and ballet has traditionally been so image and body-sized focused. While I’ve heard that its slowly changing, I think there needs to be an awareness of that there is still that culture there and so the risks are still around. So, it’s important for parents and teachers to be vigilant and look out for their young people and take the warning signs seriously,” says Claire Gasper.

It’s common knowledge eating disorders can affect any age, gender, ethnicity or cultural background. Eating disorders don’t discriminate, however there seems to be a heightened risk for dancers.

“If they are restricting and they’re feeling stuck in that and wish they didn’t have that eating disorder or wish they felt like they didn’t need it, my advice is there is a lot of help their for them and they don’t have to be dealing with this all on their own,” says Gasper.

Food and nutrition are only part of the problem. Behind every meal skipped or calorie counted lies a deeper psychological struggle that these dancers are sometimes silently battling.  

Sydney psychologist Rachel Simeone, who also specialises in helping those with eating disorders, says dance is a higher risk area because the message culturally is you are a better dancer if you’re thin.

“This idea that being thin makes you more successful is a problem because of course it affects their performance. If you’re not getting enough nutrients, you’re not getting enough energy which well than affect your organs and your bones will become fragile.”

Rachael Simeone

Traditionally, performers have been told that people of diverse body shapes and sizes shouldn’t be dancing – this is one of the main reasons why dancers struggle with their weight. There’s general agreement body positivity or the idea of inclusiveness around body size in dance is where the industry needs to get to.

“I think all of us need to reflect on what have we carried on from our cultural experiences that we contribute to the problem. We do have biases and stigma around weight and what certain sized bodies can and can’t do. And the dance community is a place where it’s just amplified,” Rachel Simeone says.

It’s a gap that has left too many young dancers without the support they need, even as the risks are widely recognised. The challenge now, Simeone argues, is ensuring those prevention strategies are not only talked about but implemented inside studios and schools.

“We need to stop normalising disordered behaviours, I think that control around food and body is praised, and that’s usually what I see for someone with early stages of an eating disorder, is that they’ve been reinforced. The message that losing weight is good, therefore gaining weight or being bigger is bad. It’s internalised, and those messages make us feel shameful about our bodies and how we’re eating,” warns Simeone.

Even while cultural change has been gradual, it’s hard to ignore voices like Jenine’s and Samantha’s. Greater awareness, more effective preventative measures, and a shift away from the typical stigma associated with body size in the dance community may help create a new generation of young dancers who aren’t subjected to the same mental struggles as dancers from previous decades.

Experts argue cultural change and prevention are now crucial, not optional. There is a chance to build a community for aspiring dancers where strength is valued above size and where dancers’ health is not sacrificed for performance.

“I would say it is possible to feel happy and accepting and loving your body. If they’re restricting and feeling stuck in that and wish they didn’t have that eating disorder. My advice is there is a lot of help out there for them, that they don’t have to be dealing with this all on their own,” says Claire Gasper.

If you, or someone you know, is affected by an eating disorder you can call The Butterfly Foundation’s National ED HOPE Line on 1800 33 4673.

Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636
Headspace on 1800 650 890
Lifeline on 13 11 14
Kids Helpline on 1800 551 800