A Short Memoir by Skyler Kling
As a young girl- I couldn’t have been more than ten years old- I remember grabbing at my pink polyester wrapped thighs, and anxiously looking up into the mirror wall at all the other little girls dressed identically. Dancing was my favorite thing in the world except for one part: the mirrors.
Every day of the week from the hour I got out of school until eight or nine o’clock I was in the studio dancing. The rooms all had at least one wall that was coated in reflective glass. We weren’t just practicing the feel of movement for twenty five hours a week, no. No, we were analyzing the look of the movements we were making. After staring at myself for so many hours on end I started to feel disoriented. I would nitpick every little detail I saw, which was a quality that made for a strong synchronic dance team, but also a very critical inner voice:
I lost the beat in that turn section.
I did not hit my battemas at the same time as the rest of the group.
I should be more expressive in my hip hop routine.
…
My breasts look so much smaller than the other girls.
My head looks too big for my long skinny neck.
My legs look huge pressed together in first position.
***
“Mom, I feel like my head was made for a different body,” I tried explaining on a somber car ride home from my dance studio one night. I didn’t know why I was telling her. My mom is not one of those people who checks her reflection whenever she gets a chance. She doesn’t wear makeup or do her hair and she told me once that when she washes her hands in the bathroom, she usually forgets to look up at herself. Maybe I thought I could confide in her.
“Hah,” she chuckled in response. “Why would you say that?”
I shouldn’t be feeling this way. Now feeling slightly embarrassed that I had started this conversation I responded even softer than before, “My neck seems too skinny to be holding it up… it looks wrong on me. It feels wrong.”
“Skyler, It feels like you’re over scrutinizing yourself. Maybe don’t focus on your head at dance practice, but focus on your body.”
I didn’t have the words to explain that I was focusing on my body and it all felt wrong. Maybe she’s right, I should be focusing more on my dancing and less on my reflection. I rested my head on the cold glass window watching the neon lights of the night blur by. The weight of my discomfort settled over me like a wet blanket and a silent tear rolled down my cheek, marking a change, indescribable to my eleven year old self.
***
As I grew older and found myself growing in anxiety and insecurity it became increasingly hard to be in rooms reflecting images of me. The beautiful washes of colors and freedom that I once felt while dancing were clouded with haunting thoughts about what my body looked like in other people's eyes.
There is a clear point in every young athlete's life when you start getting judged by your abilities. The strange thing about being a dancer is that your skill is subjectively defined. It is not about whether you catch the ball and pass it to your teammate who can run it in for a touchdown, and then your team has six more points. As a dancer you are placed in a competition level based on your confidence, musicality, execution, timing, and several other categories that can only be determined by human observers. My passion for the art began to fade through the increasing expectations and comparisons and I started to feel less alive in the studio. It didn’t matter that my ballet instructor saw something special in me. It didn’t matter that I had a unique sense of movement. It didn’t matter that dance was where I had built my community. I wasn’t in love anymore because I couldn’t handle the weight of the eyes that were always on me, suffocating me. The eyes of others. The eyes of myself.
***
After struggling with self-harm and the toxicity of dance culture, I decided to quit the competitive studio scene at the end of middle school and join the high school dance team. There was a playfulness about being in a school sport, and I didn’t lose the routine of dance. My fire for dance was reignited in these years due to a team and a coach that danced because they just loved to dance. Through more positive female role models, my self image began healing, but the eyes that were on me increased with a sneaky ferocity, as they were the eyes of my peers.
Outside of the mirrored rooms, I had always found myself physically comfortable in the tight spandex outfits that I typically got dressed in through my years of dance. Now that I was getting older I realized there was a strange sexualization that got placed on the dance and cheer teams because of these snug uniforms that showcased our bodies. We were out on the fields and courts in mini skirts and tight tops with the objective of keeping the audience entertained. I felt proud to be a “Rocky Mountain High School Dancer” but I faced new challenges now that I had to wear my uniform to school almost once a week for everyone to see.
A boy that I started seeing towards the end of my sophomore year told me to “never lose your thigh definition” while pointing along the muscle that was well exposed in my tiny dance team skirt. Why do you get to tell me how to keep my body? I thought to myself, but I said nothing. I was shocked- a cold shiver ran down my core almost as a warning alarm in my nervous system. I had always noticed my legs. Since elementary school, I could remember thinking my legs looked larger than the other girls as we ran around in our skorts at recess.
I had so intentionally just left a space in my life that was constricting my self-esteem and now someone new wants to tell me what to do with my body. Why can’t I say anything to defend my body’s voice? Maybe it was because this felt like a compliment: my legs were attractively strong. There was a flattery to his words but I also now realized that my legs were not just fictionally my prominent feature– other people noticed them too. And this boy liked them just the way they were.
What does that mean?
***
As high school drug on, I continued dancing and working my way into a leadership position on the dance team. I also kept dating this boy and the body talk didn’t stop with him. As our relationship progressed he weaseled his way into my fragile state of consciousness. I could handle and hide the anxiety that his words flared up because they were all thoughts that were not new to me: your hair looks better tied up, your legs look better tan, your eyes look better when your eyelashes are curled.
That was until one night, when he declared, “I wish you could be skinnier”.
My heart shot up to my throat but I didn’t let myself cry. Skinnier. I repeated to myself as I scanned my body. He confirmed something I had always left alone in the back of my head. I knew my legs were big, but I never felt that they were too big. I grabbed at my thighs again, not just noticing them but hating them. I didn’t let out a single tear, but I left defeated, making a silent agreement to change myself.
I wordlessly sauntered into the bathroom when I got home and unable to contain the pain of looking at myself, ripped my mirrored reflection off of the wall. That night, I hid my reflection in the closet of my childhood bedroom, closing it away until I deserved to see it again.
***
The summer that I turned seventeen, my relationship with food struggled. It felt like the one way I could find control over changing my body, as I was already working out at least five days a week with dance. Before my senior year started I went on a trip with a group of girls I hardly knew through an opportunity that had been shared with me by my favorite cousin. This was a special break from my life at home that had grown so isolating, but I was older than the other girls by a few years and perhaps because of that felt detached from them. One extraordinarily warm day of the trip, we were all sweating profusely and dealing with the chafing of salty, wet, limbs. This launched a conversation amongst the girls about “thigh-gaps,” which have been trendy in America since the 50s. As these younger girls discussed the topic I grew more quiet and began to curl into myself. Although we did share the same insecurities, I never would allow myself to admit it to anyone.
My thoughts got interrupted by a girl saying “I bet Skyler has a thigh gap.” I turned, shocked, her hand on my skirt. Before I could protest, she was lifting it up for everyone to get a glance at my now overly thin legs and the little window of light that shone between them.
“See I told you,” she proudly claims.
This also is not what I wanted. I don’t want anybody talking about my body whether in conversation of the thinness that I thought I wanted or in the strength of my legs that I had a hard time appreciating. I moved forward into my last year of high school, trying to understand my struggle, trying to survive, trying to go unnoticed. I kept dancing, avoiding food, dating the boy, but mindlessly participating in my own life, constantly thinking about what my body looked like to others rather than what it felt like for me.
***
For college I moved from the Northernmost tip of Colorado to the Southernmost corner of the state, seeking an escape from my negative associations with my home town and a physical break from the boy, who by the end of highschool, controlled my inner voice. I said goodbye to my years of dance in my decision to attend a small mountain town school that didn’t have a dance team, dance major, or any
opportunities for me to continue down that path. I was ready to move on. I was ready for change. I was ready to explore something new.
In this move I learned that when you live in a place as burly and wild as Southwest Colorado, you are also surrounded by people that match that environment. The people in this new community of mine redefined my prior ideas about human strength. They could climb huge rugged mountains, ride their bikes down chunky rock ridges, huck their bodies off of snowy cliffs on skis. I was in awe of what I was seeing around me as I settled into my first year at college. While I was excited to be planted in between the sublime mountain ranges of the San Juans and La Platas, I faced new challenges with identity.
Why am I so weak? Why am I so scared? Why did I dedicate my whole life to dance… what skills did that give me to engage with this raw world?
That insecurity about who I was and what I was doing wasn’t fueled by the same decisions that every college kid has to make: what am I going to get a degree in? I saw all of these strong badass people around me and I wanted to be like them but I didn’t know where to start. I was faced with a paradox of what I used to want from my body to what I now wanted.
I don’t want to be small and delicate, I want to be able to use my body to climb mountains, learn to bike, and ski better.
I looked in my childhood mirror that I brought all the way to college with me, vowing to myself that I was going to change, but this time for me. This new community initiated an important movement in a pivotal time in my life. I saw friends of all shapes and sizes, genders and sexual orientations coming together over a sense of freedom in outdoor recreation. A new door was opened to me, that was not free from judgment and criticism, but it was fueled by a healthy common goal to see amazing sights, push our bodies and minds, and grow.
***
Through purple knees, broken collar bones, and countless tears, I started to meet myself anew.
Skyler, you are brave, capable, and strong. This became my mantra as I learned to mountain bike as an adult. I pushed myself to harbor my discomfort when being the slowest or most cautious one on adventures because this was when I would grow. I was still scared and there were many days when I still felt weak, but as I learned new skills I began to feel alive, just as dance had once made me.
***
On a brisk July morning, I was twenty three years old, I caught the reflection of my head light bouncing off of my old truck’s window. I was glad with what I saw: running shoes tightly bowed on my feet,
cheetah print spandex shorts hugging my legs, camel back loaded up with food and water for the day, my best friend next to me equally prepared and we set off.
The typical jiggle of my thighs was frozen solid and their rosy hue matched the sun kissed mountain tops. There is magic in being able to push the human body beyond comfort, but growing in love for oneself is harder than getting up at 4 in the morning to summit a peak. Today, I was not just a girl whose legs were her prominent feature. As I bound past my fellow alpine-starters through thin air, I was a wonder woman and I loved myself for it.
***
A message to my readers:
Legs
[Short memoir]
By Skyler Kling
The process of writing this piece was challenging to say the least. This is the most vulnerable creation that I have ever made and I workshopped it with others which immediately exposed the story that I had kept hidden for years. I started writing this not knowing if I would go anywhere with it but allowing a beast within to unleash itself. I realized that it was very hard to lay my insecurities out on a table after years of learning how to hide them. I am grateful for this experience of writing to heal and artfully explore the truth of myself.
I talked to my mom recently while trying to fact check dialogue from my experience with body dysmorphia in my earlier years explored in this memoir. I was taken back when she said that she had always admired my body image growing up. She said that I was always so body positive, wore what I wanted, and complemented others, which is not how I remember myself at all. It is funny now to see this in hindsight and it made me realize that the message of my story is an important one to share with the world. So many young girls have experienced the narrative that I share: the hidden insecurities that swallow us up and detach us from our own realities.
I hope to share this story as a way for me to finally stop hiding a huge part of myself and to encourage other young girls to love themselves as they are. It is hard to be a human, but I believe it is extra hard to be a woman. There are extra standards and expectations, judgements and criticisms for women. The strongest people I know are women and I wish that I could have seen that same strength in myself at a younger age. I found love for myself in finally seeing that my body was exactly what I needed it to be all along and that is what makes it the ideal body for me.
To all my readers, you are not alone. You are all perfect the way that you are and you DO NOT have to change for anyone. Find what makes you feel whole, what makes you feel strong, and pursue it. Life is too short to waste it on negative self narratives so say bye to the evil voices, the tainted mirrors. Love your legs, your voice, your bravery. Dance, just because you love the feeling.
