Eating disorders affect thousands of people in the world but female ballet dancers are taught to think that the only way to succeed in their dream to be a professional dancer is to be thin.(The Incidence rate of Anorexia in ballet dancers) Dance is a very physically demanding, appearance based, highly competitive, and highly stressful profession. Given that the estimated number of dancers with eating disorders is so high, there have been very few actual studies on the relationship between the two. One study I came across was in the early 1990's and was attempted by Dr. Michelle Warren and Dr. Linda Hamilton, two eating disorder specialists. A three year intervention study was planned at The School of American Ballet, but 60 to 70 percent of the subjects dropped out because of injuries, embarrassment, or denial. Doctors Hamilton and Warren found that although the incidence rate for developing an eating disorder is 1 in 10 in the general population, in the ballet world it is 1 in 5. There were two other studies of ballet dancers, the first by Bettle, and the second by S.Abraham, whom respectively found that dancers wanted to lose more body weight than non-dancers. It was so dangerous that they would reach weights 82% below their normal body weight. They are so preoccupied with thoughts of eating and weight that they even use and abuse laxatives for weight control. The scariest statistic is that ballet dancers are expected to be between 10-15% below normal weight. .
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Ballet dancers were not always so skinny. Up until the eighteenth century ballerinas would have been called plump, if not downright fat in today's standards. In the eighteenth century a dancer by the name of Marie Camargo redefined the dance figure. She was a slim, short, sure footed ballerina at the time when going to the ballet was becoming fashionable. As her career blossomed, her company would not let in any girl who was taller or bigger than her.