Review of ‘Tiny dancer: Body image and dancer identity in female modern dancers’

‘Tiny dancer: Body image and dancer identity in female modern dancers’ by Susan W. Langdon is a research piece which looks into if and how the identities of dancers’ can affect their body image. Their identities come from the type of dancer they are, for example ballet, street etc and their level of experience, for example professional or amatueur. Langdon mentions in the introdution that there has been previous research into body image with regard to level of experience. Which directly relates to the another piece I reviewed ‘Body image in female professional and amateur dancers’ Pollatou et al. As the title suggests, Landon’s research is based specifically on modern dancers.

Langdon gathered her participants at a national dance festival in the USA. She asked the dancers to fill out a survey which 103 of the 180 dancers there did, from this:

·         75% of the dancers were female, modern dancers

·         Ages 18 – 55 years

·         84% were White

·         10% were non-white (African-American, Asian American and Hispanic)

·         6% did not specify their race

·         Number of years dancing ranged from 5 – 42 years

·         All participants had taken ballet at some point. 8% no longer did, 17% did on occasion and 75% still did.

The survey used various methods to determine the participants’ body images. The ‘Body Appreciation Scale’ (BAS) developed by Avalos, Tylka, & Wood-Barcalow, (2005) was the method Langdon chose for the surveying body image. The participants could answer 1 - 5 (i.e. never – always). The drive for Thinness Subscale of the Eating Disorder Inventory-2 (EDI-2) developed by Garner (1990) was used to correlate body image. In this scale infrequent behaviours are given a score of 1 and more frequent ones 1-3. The Self- Objectification questionnaire (SOQ) developed by Noll and Fredrickson (1998) was used to determine what 10 attributes the participants thought are most important. 5 were physical (i.e. attractiveness) and 5 were from within (i.e. strength). The participants had to rank the 10 items.  Langdon assessed the participants’ dance specific body image by using a questionnaire developed by Price and Pettijohn (2006). This questionnaire uses a 5-point Likert-type scale an example of the questions asked is, ‘My body right for dancing’. Finally, in order to assess the participants’ Langdon used the Athletic Identity Measurement Scale developed by Brewer, VanRaalte, & Linder (1993). However, the word athlete was replaced by the word dancer.

The results of this research are as follows:

1)    The participants had lower levels of self-objectification and drive for thinness compared to non-clinical college women.

2)    The participants had higher levels of dancer identity relative to the neutral midpoint.

3)    White women had positive levels of body acceptance and higher levels of body appreciation than the normative body appreciation.

4)    Non-White women had negative levels of body acceptance and similar levels of body appreciation to the norm.

Langdon believes that these findings indicate that the White participants focus more on competition than their appearance because they have lower drive for thinness and higher body appreciation than dancers of other ethnic backgrounds. She thinks this may indicate the athletic character of Modern dance. Langdon states that the findings she came to about Non-White dancers contradict previous research by deCasanove (2004) and Molloy & Herzberger (1998). Langdon’s findings suggest that Non-White dancers have a poorer body image than their White counterparts and lower body appreciation.

This piece is relevant to my inquiry because it considers body image and identity in modern dancers. Similar to the last piece I reviewed the participants in this research are not ballet dancers. In this piece they are Modern dancers, again they are not quite the same as most dancers in my community of practice but they are another type of dancer that are not required to be a thin as a ballerina and therefore potentially have feel less pressure to look a particular way.

The results show that White dancers, of which the participants of my inquiry predominantly are, seem to have high levels of body acceptance and a lower drive for thinness than the norm. This I find very interesting indeed and it may prove that dancers are happier with their bodies than I may have thought.

At this point I must address ethnicity. It is strange to say this but the vast majority of dancers I have worked and trained with have been White. I trained in the U.K and have worked in the U.K, Egypt, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the U.S (basically all over) with dancers from countries other than the U.K also. Yet, dancers who perform the kinds of shows I do are mostly white which is very interesting. However, to start looking into this now would be a step too far, even though this piece brings up some interesting ideas about how ethnicity can affect a dancers’ body image I think that this would be an inquiry on its own.

The research carried out by Langdon seems thorough and the questionnaire seems as though it covers all types of body image and identity questions. The research was completed in 2009 and published in 2010. The recentness of this piece makes the findings relevant today. However, the fact that the research was carried out in the U.S makes it less relevant to my inquiry because the majority of my participants will be European and perhaps the findings would be different if this research were to be carried out here.

Susan W. Langdon is a psychology lecturer at Bates College, Lewiston, Maine. Her background in psychology gives this piece credibility. The piece is designed to be read by other psychologists investigating similar topics. This is her first piece of research into dancers and she does not have a dance background. I think this is a positive thing because she has no preconceptions about the dance world and what dancers may or may not think or feel about their body image.