Get Wired Or Get Tired

The great Marxist literary critic Fredric Jameson once argued that capitalism produces spaces so vast, abstract, and systemically interconnected that individuals can no longer form what he called a “cognitive map” of the world they inhabit. We try to make sense of our present condition by situating ourselves within it, but the world in which we exist is marked by constant change, globalization, and the erosion of all traditional structures, leading to an existential and political sense of dislocation. This mapping is not simply about navigating a changing world, but allows for both the exercise of agency and the development of politics. After all, in previous generations we might find the world easier to navigate, or make sense of—you might live in a particular community, shop at the store you could afford to go to, and work in a specific location.

a lil doodle of meeee

But that's the thing. She doesn't exaggerate or grotesqueify or alter people's bodies to fit some standard. (Except insofar as she draws different species differently, and those are exquisitely practiced to ensure they have the same diversity of appearances that humans do.) She just presents people exactly as they are, complexities and oddities and all.

If you start ballet at 16, you are too old to ever expect to be able to do it seriously. If you start at 12 you’re too old. If you want to do ballet as a serious thing, as a career, you need to start at like eight years old or even younger, because your bones and joints need to be trained while they’re still flexible in order for you to be able to perform many of the required motions and stances of ballet. In particular, you need to be able to perform turnout of the hips, but all of your joints in your legs and feet will be affected, and this irreversibly changes your body.

And yet! Nobody talks about this as a negative thing! Little girls say they want to be ballet dancers, and if their parents have enough money, that’s what they get to be! Does it cause problems in later life? Yeah, sometimes! Often, even! But nobody talks about that because it’s a thing for cis people to do and so naturally it’s all fine!

By the time I was done dancing at age 18, I had been through physical therapy for 3 separate issues caused by ballet. The worst one was because of how my hips and muscles developed and it cause discomfort in my knees so bad that I couldn’t walk very far without pain, much less climb stairs. One time at a pt session, a neighboring patient, who was elderly, said I was “too young to be here”. I was in middle school so I rolled my eyes. It was/is funny to me.

I am 23 now, and I still get stiff in some places, and I’m sure it is related to dancing as a kid. I snap, crackle, and pop like Rice Krispies.

I have no regrets because ballet and was a big part of my life. I just know that it will have long term effects on my body and there is nothing I can do to change it.