A lot has been said about those Free People ‘ballet’ ads for their new ballet-inspired collection/line. Now, I am not privileged or good enough to be a full-time dancer or a serious pre-professional. Instead I am a butt-lazy recreational dancer who gets to wear cool ballet leotards and do pointe work (at the barre, mind you) and enjoy all the fun parts about ballet once a week, without having to work myself to exhaustion, bleed through pointe shoes or worry about my figure – which is great, considering I don’t have the ideal ballet body, whatever that may be.

What this means is that I have the luxury of being able to enjoy ballet-inspired concepts for what they are, and not feel completely outraged that it is demeaning to my work. Since, you know, I don’t do much actual ballet.  So things like Bunheads I love. Many serious dancers ridicule it for being a completely inauthentic portrayal of ballet training, I put it on the level of Centre Stage, but with much better dialogue (yey) and less leather pants (boo). That is to say, it is super-fun entertainment that features ballet and tries to respect that by doing things like hiring actual good ballet dancers. But ultimately it is not actually about ballet; it has a bigger story in which ballet functions as a central trope.

And ‘respect’ is the key that allows me to enjoy a ballet-inspired confection. In the same vein, I watched Black Swan for good fun, but I was none-too-happy either when people involved in the production tried to pretend Natalie Portman did all the dancing by not denying that fact, and going so far as to edit a video released by the special effects crew by removing the clips showing how they replaced the dance-double’s face with Natalie Portman’s during all the actual, well, dancing. Respect, that is not.

So this Free People thing. I’m not as outraged as actual dancers who actually ballet for a million hours a week are, but as someone who appreciates ballet and knows about the tremendous amount of dedication and effort that it takes to dance well, I’m not happy about it either. People may say, get over it, it’s supposed to be ballet-inspired – but the ad’s narrative was about someone who’s talking about her love of dance, and it was set-up to give the impression that we were watching someone who could dance ballet, and dance it well. And this model may well be a dancer of some sort, but she is clearly not  a ballet dancer and not someone who could do ballet well. And that’s a problem when this is exactly the impression your campaign is trying to give.

I saw the product pictures before I saw the ad, and my first reaction was actually that of horror. Because, I mean…

What this image is trying to say: lala look at me twirling effortlessly in my pink ballet shoes and my pretty skirt! Look how pretty this skirt is! Look how pretty I am in this skirt! You want to buy this skirt!

What this image actually says: I want to break my ankles in two!

I’m genuinely relieved the model did not snap her ankle in two by doing some fail-pirouettes in her pointe shoes. When you are turning on pointe, your supporting leg has to be on releve, which means that you have to rise up to the tips of your toes and stay there, forming sort-of a straight line from your toes to your head. Your toes have to be perpendicular to the floor, instead of at a half-assed angle like the Free People model. Like so:

Shamelessly using a picture we shot of Miko for the C&V SS’14 campaign here, because look at her so pretty awww the feels. Notice how her feet form a straight line and it looks like all her weight is on her toes? (Even though p.s, it isn’t). That’s how it should look.  And that’s important, because it is how you are able to balance en pointe. More than that, it’s also how you do things safely in pointe shoes, so that you don’t shatter your ankles and find yourself unable to walk 5eva. And that’s what makes me uncomfortable with the Free People campaign, because not only does it misrepresent ballet, but it put the safety of the lady modelling the products at risk.

Also, I need to mention these:

Their website describes them as “VIntage [sic] Painted Ballet Slippers”, which were “deadstock from a historic Philadelphia dancewear company, where they were acquired by our vintage buyer especially for this collection” and dancing on them is “not recommended”. Fair enough, it’s a good idea if people want to use pointe shoes as decorations. Like I said, ballet-inspired. It’s cool. But they’re selling them for $148 US dollars, which is  legitimately much more expensive than any actual NEW pointe shoes you can find on the market, to my knowledge. Seriously, you can buy a pair of new pointe shoes and pointe shoe ribbons for half the price (or if you have a friend who dances she’ll gift you a whole bunch of her old/dead ones for free), grab some watercolours and sharpies and decorate them with whatever message that inspires you. Be it, “dancers are the athletes of God” or “I had fish tacos for breakfast”.

And the thing about new ones is that you will actually be able to wear them, grab the closest solid object resembling a barre in your home and do a couple of rises in them and feel like the Free People model. Or a ballerina. Just remember – hold on firm with both hands to a solid object that’s slightly below your chest level, and don’t let go. Don’t jump or do anything where any of your feet leave the ground. And definitely don’t turn.