Nine Small Business Tools for Artist Entrepreneurs
What small business tools do you use an entrepreneur?
As an artist seeking to make a living, or at least generate income from selling your art and related products, you are a small business owner, and entrepreneur. This means you take on the tasks of organizing and managing your operation, and assume the risks inherent in running it. Effective use of small business tools is essential to your art career success.
You Are the Boss of You
Besides being the chief creative officer, you also are the chief marketing officer, the chief financial officer and more. It takes wearing many hats to run a successful small business. Fortunately, technological advancements allow semi-automation for many of the tasks you need to perform. We are not at the point where robots and artificial intelligence can fully manage your business operations, but we are probably closer than you think.
Just like you, I am an entrepreneur running a small business. My creative product is information presented in the form of books, e-books, blog posts, webinars, and workshops. I also provide consulting, but due to limited available time, I have never intently focused or marketed on that part of my business.
Here are nine of the small business tools I use daily.
1. Google Apps for email – my primary email address is barney@barneydavey.com, which is powered by Gmail. For the most part, it works flawlessly integrating with Google Drive, Google Hangout and other Google related programs. Oddly, one of the things that do not work as well as possible is the search. The point of archiving the email you wish to keep is that the search function will help you find it, quickly. Sometimes finding an email through the Gmail search is very frustrating. I label everything that is truly important.
As an alternative, I have seriously considered using Zoho Email, which is free and powerful. Microsoft Office 365, is another strong choice, which, while not free, comes with the option to have the entire MS Productivity Suite available in the cloud. That option may cause me to move to Office 365 at some future point. Google offers lightweight productivity programs for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations, but for me, the word processing, in particular, is not equal to using Word. I doubt it ever will.
Here is the last, but not least, word on email. If you have a domain for your website, then you should have an email address to associate with it. One way to scream amateur is to have gmail, yahoo, or aol as part of your email address. Even worse are the ones from your Internet Service Provider such as cox.net, comcast.net, sbcglobal.net, tampabay.rr.com, and so forth. You are seeking to present yourself as a professional businessperson. Your email address speaks volumes either positively or negatively. I agree, switching email addresses can be painful and somewhat laborious, but it is easily worth the effort in the long-range scheme of things.
2. Google Calendar – a calendar is necessary to run your business. You have to keep track of your appointments and activities. You can use your calendar as a stepped down project manager tool. I use Google Calendar because it works seamlessly with my email and my phone. If you need a project manager and customer manager (CRM) tool because you have a large database of buyers and prospects, and you have multiple projects with many moving parts running simultaneously, then look at Insight.ly, a free extension that works with Google Chrome.
3. ToDoIst – the basic premise of David Allen’s bestselling Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
My co-author, Dick Harrison, and I are near the finish line on a new book, How to Sell Art to Interior Designers. As such, I am transitioning from the writing stage to the promotion stage in the sequence of getting the book written, published and marketed. This means picking up new tasks to do everything possible to get the word out about the book. With new tasks and challenges, I find getting everything committed to ToDoIst for my book project is the best way to keep things moving and on track. I just could not be as effective without this wonderful tool.
4. WordPress – if you have a website, I also hope you are blogging because it is the single best way to develop an email list and pull your collectors, fans, friends and followers closer to you. You can use a blog to show your business and your personality, and snippets of your life to your readers. They don’t care what you had for dinner, but they are interested if you attended a recent gallery opening, took a museum tour, or like listening to Beethoven or Muddy Waters while you work at making your art.
Besides being a blogging platform, WordPress has evolved into a Content Management System (CMS), which allows you to create a website using it. It is estimated that nearly 20{b29860ee6b7af5bf99d3058cca3182816eed414b47dab251265e93b8c00e69b1} of all new websites published in the U.S. are produced using WordPress. Because of its huge and growing user base, the platform attracts throngs of developers adding new themes and plugins to enhance its use. As such, small business owners and artists have a wealth of options when it comes to creating a unique website and blog with a plethora of available advanced features.
I use WordPress for both ArtPrintIssues.com and BarneyDavey.com. The former is purely for blogging; the latter is an informational-based website with a fully enabled e-commerce solution. I will let you in on a secret. If I could go back to 2005, when I started both of these sites, there would only be one site with a blog attached. With a do over, I would have kept BarneyDavey.com, but the blog would go by blog.BarneyDavey.com.
Back in the day, I only had one book, which was about the print market. So I focused on that in the URL and title of the blog. As years have progressed, I have found I have much more to offer than just advice on the art print market, and have found the name to have somewhat pigeonholed me. Not to the extent that I am willing to go through loss of Google rankings and other bother to rebrand the blog, but that remains a distinct possibility for a future project.
For the past ten years, I have built my small business while working at a variety of full-time jobs. The need for affordable, quality health care has kept me from jumping to full-time status. That is due to change this fall, and I could not be more excited to have more time to consider such things as overhauling and folding ArtPrintIssues.com into BarneyDavey.com
I cannot conceive of how taking on such a challenge would be possible if I were not using WordPress. In 2005, WordPress was only two years old. I chose then to use Typepad to publish ArtPrintIssues.com as a blog, and built BarneyDavey.com on an html template. The Typepad decision turned out to be a bad one because it does not allow its users an easy way to transport a large blog like mine easily. Getting posts and their associated images with them moved was a time-consuming nightmare. This helps further illustrate why having a WordPress site and/or blog is useful – you can move it to another host flawlessly and painlessly within a very short time.
5. StudioPress.com – I use the Focus theme from StudioPress.com for both sites. StudioPress is part of the Copyblogger Media family. It is one of the best premium theme providers in the business. Many of its 42 themes are mobile responsive, including the Focus theme. This means the theme will respond to smaller screens without having to have special software or a different URL, such ArtPrintIssues.mobi, or m.ArtPrintIssues.com.
The growing use of smartphones and tablets for reading blogs, and surfing websites means you must make it easy for visitors to navigate your site. If your site is not responsive, or mobilized, then you are losing valuable traffic. It is too hard to work on driving traffic to your site to lose it because it is not convenient to read your information, or move around on it.
If you are using WordPress, then using a premium (paid) theme is important. Free theme developers have no incentive to keep pace with the ongoing upgrade to WordPress. They usually provide spottier, less effective support for their themes. When it comes to plugins, fewer is better. Each plugin you activate takes resources to run and slows your site down. Only use plugins that have been downloaded many times and have lots of 4 and 5 star ratings. Otherwise, you risk your site being hacked, or crashing due to poor scripting from inexperienced developers.
6. WP e-store – These days there is no reason you should not sell your art directly. Whether in-person, at a show or from your blog or website. You should have systems in place to make selling your work on the spot happen quickly and effortlessly. I use the WP e-store plugin to sell my books, e-books, downloads, webinars and other products right from my BarneyDavey.com/e-store page.
Given the physical size and shipping needs of selling art, it is probably not the best choice for your e-commerce solutions. If you want to keep your e-store as a plugin on your WordPress blog, I recommend looking at Woo Commerce. It is free, but has ongoing annual fees of approximately $300 for the various premium add-ons you will need to make it work for you.
If you are techie, or willing to hire a developer, then you should look at free, open-source programs such as OS Commerce and Zen Cart. I have not checked recent reviews to see if these providers are keeping pace with technological advances. As always, do your own research and careful due diligence before investing your time and money in any software. Getting expert advice is highly recommended. Chris Lema writes extensively about WordPress and has excellent information on e-commerce and other WordPress functions. He is also available for consultations if you are looking at a large-scale, expensive launch.
Other options are standalone e-commerce sites such as Volusion, 3DCart, Shopify. There are many other such platforms to consider. Check around with other artists. They can be your greatest source of reliable, insightful information.
7. Mailchimp – The whole point of a website, blog, and e-commerce is to get found, get customers and create sales. Building an email list is an integral, foundational part of the process. A responsive email list is a bottom line asset to your business. Working to build an email list is critical to your long-term online success. Facebook may lose favor; YouTube may cancel your account or delete your videos, and galleries will come and go. Throughout all such predictable turmoil, your email list will remain your most valuable marketing tool.
I use Mailchimp and recommend it to artists because they offer it free for your first 2,000 subscribers. You don’t get some of the advanced features with the free version, such as auto-responders, but you can’t beat free for starting out. Other recommended email service providers are Aweber and Get Response. I see these three most often included by developers building marketing tools, software and plugins that require email integration.
There are many other email service providers for you to research and investigate. While the platform is important, it pales when compared to the task of working diligently to gain qualified, opted-in email subscribers.
For the past several years, I have championed the idea of artists solidifying their careers by finding sustainable ways to sell direct to collectors. It is the entire premise of my Guerrilla Marketing for Artists: How 100 Collectors Can Build a Bulletproof Career. Email marketing is one of the key components to making this a reality. Networking, warm and local marketing and online marketing are all funnels to help you collect names and establish personal relationships with collectors.
Email marketing is central to achieving this goal of a self-sustained career. Find the fans, friends and followers and convert them to buyers. Keep them informed, interested and entertained through social media and especially email marketing. Focus your marketing on making this happen, and you give yourself the best shot to have the career you want and deserve.
8. Grammar.ly – Most of us, including me, don’t have the time and extra income to afford a full-time copywriter. Having seen what a good one can do to polish good copy into extraordinary copy makes me wish I could. As my business grows into a full-time occupation, it might just happen.
This copy and every post I have written in the past two years have been run through Grammarly. It is an online copywriting software program that works pretty darn good. It is not perfect, but it catches many common errors, overuse of words, and helps make one’s copy shine a bit more.
If you want to use a live service, then look at Gramlee.com. I have used it many times and have never been disappointed. Its prices are quite reasonable. You can bank words. For instance, you might buy 1,000 words and use it to have several 300- 400 pages blog posts or web pages professionally edited. If you are writing a proposal, resume cover letter, or other crucial document, then turning to Gramlee.com is highly advisable.
9. Go Daddy Bookkeeping – I started using Go Daddy Online Bookkeeping before it was bought by GoDaddy.com when it was called Outright. If you are using PayPal, then I don’t need to tell you when it comes to tax time that extracting the data you need for your Schedule C and other tax reports is a monstrous pain in the patootie.
Now, I can get a Schedule C report in a matter of a few minutes. You can add your credit cards, PayPal and checking accounts to the service. It will keep track of your expenses. You can train it automatically to file certain expenses in a chosen category. For instance, it recognizes all PayPal credit card transaction fees and appropriately files them, same for purchase from my Stamps.com account. This service saves me hours of time and headaches. I recommend it without hesitation. On the other hand, if you have more sophisticated bookkeeping needs then look at Quickbooks or Freshdesk.
This is far from a comprehensive list of every tool I use to manage my business. These are among the most important. I use them personally and have great confidence when you use them you will get the highly satisfactory results I experience, or better.
The post Nine Small Business Tools for Artist Entrepreneurs appeared first on Art Print Issues. Barney Davey is the publisher and author of this post with the exception of very infrequent, and always properly attributed contributing authors.
SOURCE: Art Print Issues – Read entire story here.
Larry Yando to Star in King Lear at Chicago Shakespeare Theater This Fall
Chicago Shakespeare Theater announces today the casting and creative team for William Shakespeare ‘s towering epic King Lear, directed by CSTFounder and Artistic Director Barbara Gaines and featuring Chicago theater legend Larry Yando in the title role.
SOURCE: Theater News – Read entire story here.
ArtsBeat: Abrons Announces Theater, Dance and Music Premieres
The Abrons Arts Center, the performing arts arm of the Henry Street Settlement, will offer a season devoted mostly to theater, dance and music premieres.
SOURCE: NYT > Theater – Read entire story here.
156 ALLSTARZ Representing at The Big Egg Hunt presented by Fabergé
SOURCE: 156 ALLSTARZ World Wide – Read entire story here.
Grand design – ecns
ecns |
Grand design
ecns Well-heeled young Chinese heading overseas to study art and design are set to change the landscape at home and abroad. Tan Xinyang said he made up his mind to study abroad while visiting a workshop at a design college in Australia a year ago. "I spent … |
SOURCE: art Design – Google News – Read entire story here.
Wire sculpture by Baltimore’s Reed. More pics and an…
Wire sculpture by Baltimore’s Reed. More pics and an interview with Reed appear here: https://theodorecarter.com/the-wire-sculptures-of-baltimore-street-artist-reed/
SOURCE: STREETSY – Read entire story here.
ArtsBeat: Smithsonian Turning to the Public to Help Transcribe Documents
The Smithsonian Institution is allowing members of the public to help decipher thousands of digitized pages that cannot be easily read by a computer.
SOURCE: NYT > Arts – Read entire story here.
Because an MFA is not an MBA
Note: This is a guest post by Deanne Gertner from Artwork Archive. Scroll to the end of the post for a generous special offer!
Art history proves that artists have moonlighted for centuries: Leonardo da Vinci worked as an engineer, Paul Gauguin worked as a stockbroker, James Rosenquist painted billboards, Barbara Kruger worked as a graphic designer, Julian Schnabel washed dishes and was a short-order cook. The artists I know with full-time jobs teach, work as arts administrators, serve tables, do graphic design. With the exception of Jeff Koons, most artists with day jobs aren’t business types. They’re probably not financial planners, accountants, business development directors, or marketing experts. Indeed, if your fine arts education was anything like mine, your business of art training amounted to an hour-long seminar a week before graduation – if you were lucky. It’s no wonder that so many artists have resorted to day jobs when that first student loan payment comes due. But, as Bob Dylan says, “Times they are a-changin’.”
More and more services, products, and organizations are springing up to arm artists with the tools they need to navigate the business side of creating art, from art agents to social media coordinators to medical insurance providers to intellectual property rights lawyers. Entrepreneurs are catching on that the creative industries are a booming business. Still, most of these products and services ignore a key component: the artist’s inventory. Without a physical body of work, all that other “stuff” is useless (conceptual artists notwithstanding.) Maintaining an accurate inventory is integral to an artist’s success. It lets you know the total value of your oeuvre, who your top clients and galleries are, your average sale price, and which pieces are available where and when. If you’re like most artists, however, you probably have cobbled-together Excel spreadsheets, random sticky notes, and a semi-accurate general idea (depending on your caffeine intake that day) of where your art is at any given time.
But semi-accurate and cobbled-together will only get you so far – which is not very, I might add. One online tool, Artwork Archive, puts all that amazing, untapped inventory data – data you probably don’t even realize you have – into a sleek, sophisticated archive you can harness to make your inventory work for rather than against you. For one, you’ll be able to make educated, thoughtful decisions based on cold, hard information not whilly-nilly, Magic 8 Ball randomness. You’ll be able to determine via a geographical heat map, for instance, whether you should move work from your local gallery to the one in Santa Fe. You’ll be able to see your entire inventory in a single view to determine whether you have available work you can submit to a call for entry. You’ll know when your inventory is stagnant so that you can focus your time on marketing existing pieces instead of creating new work. And that’s not all. You can create consignment sheets, track competition submissions, graph your sales over time, maintain your contact lists, generate invoices, and export your data from the site.
Advanced Inventory Reports
Knowledge is Power
Think about how much easier tax time will be with all your sales information in one place and format. Think of the time you’ll save trying to track down pieces and galleries. Think about how much easier it will be to decide which gallery should get which piece. Think about how you’ll be working smarter not harder. You’ll be a veritable genius! Art world, watch out – there’s an empowered artist in town! As an artist, think of yourself as the sole proprietor of a small business: you’re the art director, office manager, marketing director, bookkeeper, business development director, transportation manager, the list goes on. Artwork Archive is the glue that holds all of these disparate roles together to make your art career successful – as we learned from SchoolHouse Rock: “knowledge is power!”
We all like to think that art happens in an ivory tower where the artist is as removed from material society as some princess with crazy-long hair. The truth, as we all know yet struggle to come to terms with, is that artists are people who eat, sleep, get cavities, pay taxes, and buy groceries. Impossible, I know! But understanding that art is both a way of life and the means by which you live that life, frees you of that diabolical notion that making money as an artist equals selling out. Au contraire, my friend, au contraire. Making a living as an artist supports not only yourself but the entire creative economy: paint and brush manufacturers, canvas stretchers, art supply retailers, galleries, art consultants, framers, shippers, art installers, lighting designers, appraisers, conservators, curators, docents, security guards – too many to count, for sure. Is it any wonder, then, that art is two-thirds of smart?
Special offer for Right Brain Rockstar Readers
Right Brain Rockstar fans, save 20{b29860ee6b7af5bf99d3058cca3182816eed414b47dab251265e93b8c00e69b1} on your first year’s membership at Artwork Archive.
Do you have a system for keeping track of your artwork? Let us know about it in the comments…
SOURCE: Right Brain Rockstar – Read entire story here.
Edinburgh Theater Review: ‘The James Plays’ – Variety
Variety |
Edinburgh Theater Review: 'The James Plays'
Variety Not only are these three premieres the centerpiece of the theater program of the 2014 Edinburgh International Festival, but they mark the first collaboration between the National Theater of Scotland (NTS) and the National Theater of Great Britain … |
SOURCE: theater – Google News – Read entire story here.
DJ Dub Presents Yasiin Bey – Re:DEFinition [Mixtape]
It’s been many years since Mos Def has released a track that I liked. But I’ve always been a huge old school Mos Def fan. He was a dope underground MC and I don’t know what happened to him after Black on Both Sides. It was one flop after another. Plus live he was always great at moving the crowd (MC). If you ever get a chance to see him live it’d be worth the price of admission.
Anyway – if your a big fan of the old Mos Def or your in the mood to listening to some dope hip hop – YOU NEED TO LISTEN TO THIS!
All you wack MC’s should take notes….
CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO DOWNLOAD
01. Intro (beat by Hi-Tek)
02. Inner City Rock** (beat by DJ Premier)
03. Travellin Man**(beat by Mathematics)
04. 24 Hour Karate School (beat by Ski)
05. Next Universe** (beat by Rza)
06. Life Is Good (beat by DJ Deckstream)
07. B-Boy Document ’99 w/Mr. Eon, Mike Zoot (beat by Mighty Mi)
08. Standing On Guard Interlude
09. Fix Up w/Talib Kweli (beat by Madlib)
10. Wannabwhereur w/Floetry** (beat by Saukrates)
11. Another World w/Talib Kweli (beat by The Kreators)
12. Undeniable** (beat by DJ Premier)
13. Made You Die w/Mike Flo, Dead Prez (beat by Salaam)
14. Stakes Is High Remix w/De La Soul, Truth Enola** (beat by Pete Rock)
15. Forever Alive (beat by Oh No)
16. The Edge** (beat by J Dilla)
17. Oh No w/Pharoahe Monch, Nate Dogg** (beat by Diamond D)
18. Sex Love Money** (beat by Madlib)
19. Sunshine Screwface (beat by J Dilla)
20. NY Is Killing Me w/Nas, Gil Scott-Heron** (beat by Gil Scott-Heron)
21. Black Radio Remix (beat by Pete Rock)
22. I Dont Like (beat by Young Chop)
23. Niggas In Poorest (beat by Hit Boy)
24. Bey** (beat by Marc Nfinit)
25. Taxi (beat by Ski)
26. Holiday w/Jay Electronica (beat by Just Blaze)
27. Just Begun Interlude
28. Just Begun w/Jay Electronica, J. Cole, Talib Kweli (beat by Hi-Tek)
29. Love Rain w/Jill Scott** (beat by Ski)
30. Cream Of The Planet (beat by Ski)
31. Re:DEFinition (beat by DJ Dub)
32. You Already Know (beat by Oh No)
33. Exhibit B** (beat by Just Blaze)
34. Exhibit 2** (beat by Just Blaze)
35. Omfgod (beat by Mannie Fresh)
36. Say You Will (Live)
**DJ Dub Remix
PS
On a side-note M1 killed it on Made You Die! Again – wack MC’s take note! Go to Track 25:33 to hear what I’m talking about.
PSS
Let me know what you think is the best track on the mix in the comment section below!
The post DJ Dub Presents Yasiin Bey – Re:DEFinition [Mixtape] appeared first on NEW YORK CITY GRAFFITI STREET ART BLOG – WELCOME TO KINGS OF NEW YORK!.
SOURCE: NEW YORK CITY GRAFFITI STREET ART BLOG – WELCOME TO KINGS OF NEW YORK! – Read entire story here.
English National Ballet Announces Promotions and New Joiners
Tamara Rojo, Artistic Director of English National Ballet, has announced promotions within the Company as well as details of new joiners:
Yonah Acosta has been promoted to Principal. Shiori Kase, who last month won the gold medal at the USA International Ballet Competition, has been promoted to First Soloist. Yonah and Shiori will debut the lead roles in Coppélia at the London Coliseum 23-27 July. Junor Souza (winner of Emerging Dancer 2014) has also been promoted to First Soloist.
Ksenia Ovsyanick has been promoted to Soloist and Alison McWhinney (winner of Emerging Dancer 2014) and Ken Saruhashi have been promoted to First Artist.
Alejandro Virelles, currently a Soloist at Boston Ballet, joins the Company as Principal. Joining as Artists are Precious Adams, who won the Apprenticeship and Contemporary Dance Prize, Prix de Lausanne 2014, Yoko Callegari, of Boston Ballet, Adriana Lizardi, from Ballet National de l’Opera de Bordeaux, Sarah Kundi, formerly with Ballet Black who joined after appearing as an extra in Romeo & Juliet in-the-round, and Isabella Brouwers and Jin Hao Zhang who join from English National Ballet School (ENBS).
Jenna Lee left the Company after the Madrid tour to found JLee Productions and Nancy Osbaldeston after Romeo & Juliet in-the-round to join Royal Ballet Flanders. Daria Klimentová retired after 18 years with the Company.
The post English National Ballet Announces Promotions and New Joiners appeared first on English National Ballet.
SOURCE: English National Ballet – Read entire story here.
My Dance Teacher Thought She Was My Friend — But She Was Body-Shaming Me
My high school is the only high school in the world where it is cooler to be in the spring musical than to be a cheerleader. But I wanted to do it anyways.
At the end of my freshman year of high school, I decided I was going to join the “Spirit Squad.” Up to that point I had been competitively figure skating for ten years, and I wanted to have a more “typical” high school experience. I felt isolated. I needed to be a part of something.
My sophomore year, I continued to skate before school, dance during school, and have cheer practice after school — it was too much. But I was in the throes of an unacknowledged eating disorder, and I kept it up because I was celebrated. I was placed in the front row of dances, fellow team members asked me for diet and exercise tips, and hell, my self-deprecating humor was funny! Most importantly, I loved being on the team.
When junior year rolled around, I couldn’t keep it up anymore. I lessened my extra-curricular load, and I upped the ante academically. College demanded these things, I was told. Nonetheless, I was the crowd leader that year, so I was still part of the team. I put on the polyester shells, I put my hair in a “half-up poof,” and I yelled about football. But I started to feel excluded. In dance class, which I was still in, I was taken out of dances I had been in the year before. I thought to myself, “Is it because I gained some weight? I guess that could be part of it. I guess I’m not good anymore.”
I was too anxious and depressed to do anything about it.
Senior year, I was going to do it all. Back on the cheer squad, I squeezed back into my shell for the third year in a row.
Fun fact about me — I think I’m allergic to pom poms.
Aside from loving my team mates, I was miserable. I had just entered a long distance relationship, I was worried about getting into college, and I had gained even more weight. I felt it. I knew it. And it was a topic of discussion.
In high school, my humor was purely self-deprecating, as I mentioned before. I was riddled with body insecurities as I was attempting to keep up the illusion of perfection. Humor was my way of saying, “Hey. I’m okay guys!” when I actually was not. The thing about people with self-deprecating humor is that they are usually the most insecure; and it is only okay if they, themselves, make the scathing jokes.
In practice one day, I made a joke about one of my skirts not fitting: “If I bend over too far, my buttons are gonna blow!”
This joke was not out of the ordinary. Minutes after every football game would end, I would snap open my skirt and dramatically announce, “FINALLY.” Everyone would laugh, and I would make a few more jokes about not being able to breathe. It was normal.
But the reality of it was mortifying for me. This was the skirt that was too big for me sophomore year, and now I could hardly breath. It used to hang from my hip bones, and now it clung to me like Saran wrap.
So when I made this joke, my dance teacher responded by saying, “Yeah, your butt does hang out of it during all the games!”
Her “playful” comment was affirming my deepest insecurity. Does everyone know? Everyone knew my clothes did not fit anymore. I held onto this. I obsessed about this. I cried about this. But I tried to move on. What was I supposed to do? I was being too sensitive, I thought. And she was right, I was stuffed into that A-line skirt.
Next, “Block Formations” were formally instituted. The formation made it so that the only person who was visible was the person in the front, leaving the two girls standing directly behind her completely blocked. Block formation would create “cleaner” lines, and be more “professional.” I’m a team player, that’s fine. But time after time, I found myself at the back of these formations. And hey, so was my friend who had gained weight over the span of our cheer careers. Oh, I could be seen, I was assured. Not from the front where the audience was sitting, but from specific angles on the sides. One time I was almost placed directly behind the only male member of our team who was 5’11. I was 5’4.
I was sick of it. I was a senior, master of the universe and high school. I had worked hard to be on this team, and why was I always in the back? I never was before. If I was that bad, please save me the embarrassment and kick me off of the team.
I was sad. My best friend and boyfriend (I know, awful. But it was true) was across the country. I was alone. I was applying to colleges and I was unsure of where I was going in life. And most importantly, I was fat. Block formations affirmed that I was too big for this team, I was too big for this uniform. I snapped.
“Why put me in this dance if we’re going to be in this formation? I honestly would rather not be in it if I’m that bad.”
Those twenty-six words were the only words of dissent that had ever spilled from my lips in my entire life up to that point.
Tears immediately gushed out of my head.
Promptly after, a meeting with the seniors was arranged. We were all given the opportunity to air our grievances: formations were unfair, no one was listening to the team captain, professionalism on the team was not up to snuff, etc.
I cried too much. I cried about missing my boyfriend, even though that was not the main issue, it was just the easiest way to wiggle my way out of confrontation.
Formations were here to stay. The deed was done. The meeting adjourned.
As we left the meeting, my dance teacher pulled me aside and divulged her deepest secrets to me. She expressed that she too had struggled with her weight, and she too felt like her body type wasn’t accepted in dance. She could see right through me, she saw that I was suffering. She was my “friend.”
But that’s the worst part, even though she “understood,” she was the one shaming me. She was the one punishing me for gaining weight. Years before she had celebrated my body — my tiny, taut, starving body — she had given me the opportunity to dance. But now she was simultaneously telling me she understood, while making comments about how my uniform did not fit.
She was pretending to be my best friend, but she was actually my worst enemy.
I don’t have closure. I don’t know if I will anytime soon, because this was not an isolated incident. There are plenty of more incidents that I am not ready to share. But I can tell you that I have never felt more violated and torn apart by an authority figure.
It was later confirmed that my dance teacher did suspect that I had an eating disorder. But she never once addressed me about it. That one day after the meeting, I assume she opened up to me about her own struggle hoping that I would open up to her. But the problem was that I didn’t see it in myself. I didn’t see the eating disorder, I saw imperfection. I saw fat.
It is somewhat comforting to know that she worried about me. But her worry does not excuse the fact that she was the one pelting body shame at me. Although she had once felt discriminated in the world of dance, as many people do, she was perpetuating that discrimination. She sincerely believed that the girls who had extra weight could not “execute the moves,” nor could we “whip ourselves around” due to the excess weight. I can assure you that was not and is not the case.
I was used to my body being under scrutiny. Like I said, I was a figure skater for 13 years. But the devastating part about this experience is that this was supposed to be my escape. This was my attempt to be a high school kid. In the end, it perpetuated my eating disorder, while enforcing the unrealistic standards that were being placed on my body.
My temptation is to tell you numbers. I want to tell you what I weighed, I want to tell you what size I wore — but that’s not the point. That’s perpetuating a standard. That is telling you that the size I was is fat in someone’s eyes. I tell you this because I wish I had had the strength to realize that I was a beautiful dancer. I could not see that because I was in a toxic environment. I was in an environment that told me I could not be good at something because of my weight. I was in an environment where when one girl would lift up her shirt, it would cause all of the girls in the room to pull up their shirts to look at themselves in the mirror. I lived in a world of comparison. I was compared to the girls around me, and I was a compared to what I had been — anorexic. And because of that culture of comparison, I was punished.
Spring of senior year, I did not start to heal nor did I see the insanity of the situation until another teacher of mine told me I was not allowed to lose weight for a role in the musical. She weighed me and threatened to take my lead part away if I lost weight. That was the first time someone told me I did not have to lose weight to get what I wanted. That was the first time that what I could do was more important than how my body looked. That was the first time that someone told me that I was enough.
Words do not have meaning unless you give them meaning and life. My dance teacher’s words may have taken years to scrape clean from my subconscious, but they are now powerless. Their corpses lay dead on the floor like a mangled mouse that the cat dragged in. I hope she learns that her words have power, as do all adults in a child’s life, so that she does not leave someone damaged like she left me.
Dance is a complicated world. It’s a world where your body is your canvas, and that canvas is supposed to look a certain way. And sadly, that standard doesn’t just exist in dance, it’s everywhere. But thankfully, the world is changing.
Which is why I leave you with this: When someone makes a comment about your body, tell them to shut up. They won’t like it, but they’ll never make a comment about your body to you again. Once I started doing that, I was finally allowed to learn to love my body. In the same vein, if someone makes a comment about their own body, tell them to shut up. It’s getting old. No one wants to hear about how fat you think they are, nor do we want to indulge you and tell you how “pretty” you are- you should not need our validation or confirmation. If you are the one doing this, It’s time to take a good, long look at yourself and say, “Why am I saying this? What is really going on here.”
In the end, dance like no one is watching, and tell people to shut up when it is necessary. Even if it is your teacher. You’ll probably get in trouble, but it will probably become a good story.
Originally posted on https://paulinapinsky.wordpress.com/
SOURCE: Arts Blog on The Huffington Post – Read entire story here.