Balletcore: Femininity, Glamour, and Exclusion
Grace Phillips
05.09.2024
“Balletcore” is a fashion trend and aesthetic that has gained incredible popularity over recent years. The style both mimics the stage costumes of ballerinas and their backstage and warmup attire, replicating what one may suppose a dancer wears back and forth from the studio. Although both play a role in formulating the style, the latter has been more popularized online by current celebrities like Elle Fanning and Lily-Rose Depp — as well as drawing influence from classical icons like Audrey Hepburn. The movie Black Swan featuring Natalie Portman is also deeply associated with the style’s prevalence. The fashion trend consists of components like tutus, bodysuits, ballet flats, tights, headbands, wrap sweaters and skirts, hair bows, pearls, ribbons, leggings (usually flared), leg warmers, silk slips, the layering of basics, and slicked-back buns. A palette of soft pink, white, nude, and black delineates the clothing items, as well as long, graceful silhouettes, emphasizing the neck and collarbone in particular.
Many commercial items have also been enveloped as characteristics of balletcore. Miss Dior rose-scented perfume and Miu Miu ballet flats have become staples of the aesthetic – one need only type balletcore into the search bar and scroll down Pinterest for a minute to see these items arranged with strings of pearls or pink ribbon, becoming less like marketable products and more reflections of feminine life. In this way, balletcore is perceived by many as more than a fashion trend, morphing into an idealized way of being and existing within the confines of aesthetic and stylized products. Many companies have seized the opportunity to profit off this trend as well; Urban Outfitters recently released a collection titled “Balletcore Trend” with knit shrugs, bowed garments, tights, and more in the iconic pinks and neutrals.
By its very nature, balletcore endorses hyper-femininity. The sport of ballet has long been associated with girlhood, partly because many young girls, myself included, were enrolled in ballet classes as children. Balletcore revolves around items like bows, frills, blush, ruffles, and all things pink that have been doggedly attributed to girls since birth. Many girls have experienced traditional attributes of womanhood like these ridiculed, often in their childhood and young adult life, and grapple with its implications. When women dress more feminine — wearing bows in their hair or incorporating lots of pink into their wardrobes for example — they can be perceived as superficial or frivolous, and therefore are not taken seriously. Balletcore drastically opposes such experiences, providing a space for those who felt their inclination toward femininity challenged or looked down upon in their youth or now. With this onslaught of drastically feminine clothing circulating the fashion world, where do men and non-female identifying individuals fit in? Perhaps this style could provide a point of access for people who have never been allowed the freedom to explore their femininity, as more and more people come to accept it as a tenet of daily dressing.
For many, balletcore has facilitated a return to the simple fun of dressing and the concept of “play” in fashion. Tutus and bows, which may have previously been reserved for dress-up or costumes, are now being incorporated into regular fashion and street-wear outfits. It is suddenly possible to wear comfortable athleisure (leggings, knits, leg warmers, etc) but to theatricalize daily options and feel at once stylish in an outfit and not dressed up at all. There is a sense of release and return in embracing balletcore, and feeling the confidence to choose hyper-feminine pieces one might have judged as too bold before. Amidst a fashion trend rooted in the feminine and driven by female-identifying people, many feel suddenly emboldened to welcome intrinsic values of femininity back into their lives and daily expression.
These genuine attractions of Balletcore, however, can be eclipsed by other qualities. It is difficult to ignore the glaring issue with Nina Sayers, the main character of Black Swan, who suffered from an onslaught of mental illnesses and struggled with an eating disorder, as a revered patron of balletcore. Many girls seem to view her not as an intensely troubled and ill individual, but as an icon of femininity they admire. They seem to misconstrue Nina’s suffering as a simple byproduct of an artist’s passion, the result of the beautifully tragic life of “a starving artist.” This is a dangerous concept for a multitude of reasons, one being the undeniable presence of eating disorders within ballet and dance communities. Like many intensive sports, eating restrictions and diet plans are part of the culture, but ballet in particular idealizes thin bodies and associates the virtue of discipline with restrictive eating. This is in part due to the type of body ballet reveres: a paper-thin, often unmatured, body of a young girl. In my own time dancing, there was unconcealed discrimination against any other body type, through explicit demands for individuals to diet, roles restricted from people who could not fit into the XS costumes, and constant chastisements of our bodies.
Ballet is a serious, rigorous sport rooted in tradition and, because of that, uniformity is highly stressed both in body types and costumes. In many dance practices, the color palette of black, pink, and neutral is strictly enforced — dancers often wear black leotards, slicked-back buns, and pale pink tights matching pale pink pointe shoes. Often these uniforms do not account for dancers with different skin tones, because white ballerinas have historically made up the majority of companies. Today people of color within the ballet world are still presented with few, if any, options. A handful of balletwear manufacturers have recently come out with inclusive choices, but many dance companies do not allow those variations within their uniforms anyway. Light-toned pointe shoes and pale tights were requirements at the school I danced at just a few years ago, which set a precedent for who was welcomed into that space and who wasn’t. Although the sport is beloved by many and its dedication to tradition creates a uniquely striking art, engaging in a style trend that promotes the essential principles of ballet requires awareness of ballet’s shortcomings and caution toward the rhetoric of balletcore as a result.
Idealizing the dark aspects of ballet culture in online representations of balletcore is disrespectful to the lived experiences of dancers currently grappling with or recovering from those realities. Moreso, the echoes of fatphobic and racist ideology in ballet have rippled down into the fabric of ballet core, evident in online depictions of the aesthetic as synonymous with “skinny core.” A glaring lack of diversity afflicts the seemingly harmless trend. I scoured Pinterest for a long time before I could find any depictions of balletcore style on someone who wasn’t white, cis-gendered, or skinny, which calls into question the fundamental components of the aesthetic. Although Elle Fanning certainly embodies the trend, why does participation seem reserved for those who look like her? Does balletcore simply glamorize ballet’s iconic fashion or does it glamorize the prejudices and non-inclusivity the sport exhibits as well?
While tying a bow in your hair shouldn’t require tremendous thought, registering the implications of how balletcore is represented online, and who is not included in those representations, is crucial. Above all else, the sole result of experimentation with clothing should be comfort and genuine joy. One does not need to pirouette or arabesque in order to experience the cathartically feminine qualities balletcore has to offer. However, if you choose to participate in the fashion trend, be certain you are aware of the exclusionary elements balletcore endorses and the dark underbelly of ballet as a whole.
