In both the dance world and mainstream culture, there’s a pervasive idea that if a concert dancer has breasts, they should be small. The message is telegraphed to dancers in classrooms and rehearsal studios, and to the public in fashion campaigns and dance TV shows. Some plastic surgeons even refer to surgeries intended to create a smaller chest as “ballerina” breast augmentation.
Dancers who don’t fit into that mold—especially in ballet, where body pressures can be particularly extreme—often internalize the idea that something is wrong with them. Frequently, they quite literally don’t fit into costumes and other dancewear, which only reinforces the problem.
Where does this specific mindset come from? And have recent efforts to embrace both body positivity and a wider variety of gender expressions in the dance world made it any better?
The Origins of the Flat-Chested Ideal
Images of ballet dancers from the 1700s and 1800s show that more voluptuous bodies were once desirable in the field. According to dance historian Lynn Garafola, the shift toward a very thin and flat-chested ideal was influenced by fashion starting in the 1920s, with the emergence of the flapper girl. The look was so “in” among flappers that many wore garments designed to flatten their chests. As high-fashion houses in Europe emerged after World War II, they also embraced a very thin look.
Those forces likely influenced choreographers like George Balanchine, who is often identified as the originator of the flat-chested trend in ballet. He may not have begun it, but he certainly contributed to it. Many of his muses, including Tanaquil Le Clercq and Suzanne Farrell, were still very young when they gained Balanchine’s favor, meaning his aesthetic is associated with a childish body. Balanchine also famously found fat to be a distraction, seeing curves as interrupting the dancer’s line.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, both fashion and dance put yet more emphasis on an ultrathin, small-breasted look. Only in recent years have advocates for size inclusivity started to make some headway.
“Distracting” Bodies
Ballet dancer and actress Sarah Hay remembers her body first becoming an issue in ballet school evaluations around age 10. She was told to “watch her weight,” but “I didn’t really look different from anyone else besides having gone through the beginnings of puberty,” she says. At 19, a male director told her he found her body “distracting.”
These pressures don’t just exist within ballet. “Growing up as a competitive dancer and being onstage with thin, flat-chested girls, I just didn’t want to be there,” says Hayden J Frederick, a trans dancer and choreographer who had top surgery (to remove their breast tissue) in 2020. “From a young age, this created deep shame and ultimately an eating disorder for me. I wanted to lose weight and have that affect my chest, as well.”
Abigail Williams-Joseph, who trained in ballet, contemporary, and musical theater dance, embraced aerial performance and burlesque as an adult, in part because as a curvy, Black woman, she was often told she didn’t have the right look for other types of dance. “In entertainment, your image, your body, is a product. If people can’t associate the product with the service you offer, sometimes there’s a disconnect,” says Williams-Joseph, whose stage name is Onyx Noir. “If somebody thinks I don’t look like a dancer, they might draw the conclusion that I’m not a good dancer.”
Thankfully, the dance world has slowly begun to make room for dancers with larger breasts—particularly post-pandemic, as size-inclusivity movements have gained momentum. “Now I look around and see fuller-figured dancers in really prestigious companies,” Hay says.
Fit and Function
Often, it’s hard for larger-breasted dancers to find dancewear that supports them properly. One thing that’s easier and more comfortable about burlesque, Williams-Joseph says, is that most garments are custom-made by the performers themselves.
“Given how important lines are in dance styles like ballet, you would think similar technology would be there,” Williams-Joseph adds. “Especially for young dancers whose bodies are changing rapidly. It’s great that we’re finally getting natural-skin-tone clothes and shoes, but the process is slow-moving when it comes to fit and function.”
Hay notes that she’s seen some dancewear lines try to accommodate different body types, but in her experience the results have been mixed, with many of the garments poorly or awkwardly constructed. And even though more dancewear brands are now including better built-in bras, she adds, they’re often found only in the most basic styles.
Hay recalls feeling “humiliated” early in her career by having to wear costumes with little to no bust support, and intensely relieved once a costume designer figured out how to build her a custom sports-bra–style garment that could be worn under most costumes. But “it took me becoming more of a soloist for that to happen,” she says.
Surgery and Bodily Autonomy
Rather than finding costumes and other dancewear to fit them, many dancers are encouraged to have breast-reduction surgery. Hay has spoken publicly about facing such pressure. She doesn’t begrudge anyone who has surgery, she says, but personally, she never seriously considered it. For Hay, her breasts are one of “the ultimate feminine parts of me,” she says. “I don’t think it’s a humane thing to ask someone to cut their body parts off to fit into a costume, or an aesthetic, or preference.”
Madeline Art, who grew up training in a pre-professional ballet program, did choose to have a breast reduction—but only after she went to college, where she stepped off the full-time ballet track. For Art, it was more about the way her breast size affected all areas of her life. When she returned to dancing after surgery, some things were easier. “Everything did feel a lot more right and more seamless,” she says. “I remember turning again and realizing I had a whole different center of balance.” But she’s glad she got the reduction for herself—not for ballet.
For Frederick, having top surgery was about finding a “true and authentic expression” of their gender, and not about fitting any mold. “Realizing that I was trans and coming out as trans in general was a very difficult, challenging journey,” they say. “Dance spaces are not created for people like me.” The dance world has a long way to go toward truly accepting trans and nonbinary people without expecting them to fit a certain look, they added. Still, after having top surgery, “it felt like I was remeeting dance and movement,” Frederick says. “I felt like, for the first time, I was experiencing the joy that I had watched other people experience.”
Ultimately, the decisions dancers make about their chests are deeply personal. “We’re stripped of bodily autonomy in dance spaces,” Frederick says. “Being able to reclaim that is part of a much larger change in shattering many harmful societal norms.”
