Extra extra: Ballet critic hates fat people

I don't like food, I love it. If I don't love it, I don't swallow. -Anton Ego, "Ratatouille"

So, there probably aren't a lot of places in the newspaper world anymore for a professional ballet critic. I can't say I know a lot about ballet - I staged a fake knee emergency to avoid going onstage in my community center ballet recital at age 5, and I've probably been to about 10 or so ballets since. An embarrassing percentage of those were performances of the Nutcracker, and I can't imagine there are a lot of more boring, miserable duties in the life of a professional ballet critic than trying to come up with something interesting to say about the Nutcracker. Maybe that's why this happened.

Ballet critic defends right to call skinny people fat

Well, that'll certainly get some page hits.

Look, it's nothing new that the NYT doesn't like fat people. In fact, not liking fat people is probably a better fit on the ballet beat than their weekly 'pediatrician discovers children are fat' story for the front page, or their twice yearly 'fashion industry discovers fat people buy clothes' story for the magazine. Of course, that doesn't mean that the story isn't wrong on nearly all levels.

The wrong STARTS in graf 1, when he implicitly compares ballet dancers - probably some of the hardest-working athletes in the art world - with Renaissance odalisques whose idea of hard physical labor was lifting their own grapes, putting on a court gown, or fucking high-status men for jewelry.

Then he gets into the shade he threw at the two dancers, which was about at the level of a bored drag queen who hadn't had her coffee yet. The Times thoughtfully included a picture of the dancers, where you can totally see what he's getting at. I can only see one set of the woman's vertebrae.

Like most bigots, Macaulay is way more offensive when trying to defend himself than in the original breach. Here's some of his better gems:

"The general feeling was that my characterizations went beyond the pale of civilized discourse. One reader wrote that the review was “appalling,” “heartbreaking,” “childish, “hurtful” and “incompetent.”"

How delicately he invokes our sympathy. However much his feelings were hurt by the boors who didn't appreciate his review, he never complains, but remains stoic in the face of overwhelming artistic oppression.

"When I described Nilas Martins as “portly” in The New York Times and Mark Morris as “obese” in the Times Literary Supplement, those remarks were also greeted with silence. Fat, apparently, is not so much a feminist issue as a sexist one. Sauce for the goose? Scandal. Sauce for the gander? No problem."

Seriously. Get over it, fat chicks.

"Ballet demands sacrifice in its pursuit of widely accepted ideals of beauty. To several readers that struggle is, regrettably but demonstrably and historically in the case of many women, concomitant with anorexia."

So concomitant, in fact, that it has COMPLETELY FUCKED YOUR SENSE OF REALITY. You live in a world where anorexia is the new normal. Know how I know? YOU THINK THESE PEOPLE ARE FAT.

Anyway, enough foreplay. Let's bump uglies, Alastair.

"Some correspondents have argued that the body in ballet is “irrelevant.” Sorry, but the opposite is true. If you want to make your appearance irrelevant to criticism, do not choose ballet as a career. The body in ballet becomes a subject of the keenest observation and the most intense discussion. I am severe — but ballet, as dancers know, is more so."

And there we have it. Macaulay isn't a big meanie, or a bigot. He's Anton Ego - the last pure aesthete in a world full of senseless compromises to bad taste. I wonder if he's saddened by all the inroads fat people have made into other forms of media - you know, all the fat people presented as socially well-adjusted, romantically viable, empowered protagonists in movies and television, all the fat people in positions of corporate authority, all the fat children and teens with functional senses of self-worth and dreams for their future that don't hinge on unrealistic weight loss - and thinks 'At least I can save ballet.'

Once upon a time, you couldn't be in a ballet corps if you were too tall. You couldn't be in one if you were black. The idea being that it destroyed the visual of perfect symmetry among the secondary dancers, who weren't meant to be individually notable for any physical quality. Because it was all about the 'purity of line,' the 'ideal of beauty.'

Newsflash, Anton; fat bodies have lines too. Not that either of those dancers would know (seriously, my god look at them they are not fat what is wrong with you) but there is no emotion that a fat body can't convey if the body's owner knows how to convey it. They can move. They can tell a story. They can fly.

What you are actually talking about - what you are bemoaning - is not a dearth of beauty. Beauty has nothing to do with it. It's fashion. You live in a world where a level of body fat concordant with optimal health is a deviation from the dictates of a particular culturally-derived artistic ideal - JUST LIKE TITIAN. Titian wasn't painting beautiful women. He was painting fashionable women, many of whom happened to be beautiful. And in a world where vast swathes of the population didn't have enough to eat - and probably looked like your dream ballet dancer - fashionable meant rolls.

You're not talking about beautiful bodies - at least, not in any way I've ever heard echoed by sexually active adults. You're talking about fashion, which in your case has trumped substance. Allow me to remind you of another Anton Ego quote.

There are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends.

When you find reasons to denigrate the contributions of artists based on ephemera, you aren't defending art. You're insulating it from change. If the standards of beauty in ballet are actually loosening, making room for more dancers who would have been turned away a generation ago, THAT MAKES BALLET BETTER, NOT WORSE.

You had a chance to be the friend to a new type of dancer. You blew it, and you probably harmed or killed two talented dancer's careers.