{"id":143,"date":"2015-12-11T19:25:25","date_gmt":"2015-12-11T19:25:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sarahignatius.com\/staging\/4657\/?p=143"},"modified":"2026-05-25T12:20:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T16:20:11","slug":"ballet-or-boxing-hows-a-girl-to-decide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sarahignatius.com\/staging\/4657\/2015\/12\/ballet-or-boxing-hows-a-girl-to-decide\/","title":{"rendered":"Ballet or Boxing: How\u2019s a Girl to Decide?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"ballerina<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As a kid, I was never a ballerina in a fluffy tutu. I hated dresses. I played with stuffed animals, not dolls. I grew up being called a Tom-Boy. But recently, I stumbled into a Ballet Barre Workout class at my health club, when I was late for the class I meant to attend, and now ballet barre is my favorite thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our teacher is tough. \u201cPull in those abs, Sarah. Harder. Tuck in your bottom, Sarah. Turn your feet out.\u201d And I love it. When she tells us \u201cto look straight toward the horizon and pli\u00e9 with dignity,\u201d we do and beam. Our inner five-year-olds are very happy. We don\u2019t care the mirrors lining the walls are trying to remind us of a different reality. We check our positions, tuck in our butts, and \u201cgaze at the people in the loge box seats.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our teacher treats us like ballerinas. Maybe it\u2019s her piano music tape, or her careful corrections: \u201cLift your arms over your head, slightly in front of you, so you could just see your fingers if you looked up\u201d (which you are not allowed to do). Maybe it\u2019s the delight she expresses when for a brief moment we are all balancing on our toes, arms curved overhead, without wobbling or holding onto the barre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whatever it is, the class casts a spell. If I were actually five, I\u2019d probably hate it. In fact, at the only ballet class my mother ever took me to when I was about five, the teacher suggested to my mother that I not come back, \u201cShe\u2019s definitely athletic but not a dancer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was never the girly type. We have a photograph of a family gathering with my great grandmother in the center and my grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, siblings and cousins. I\u2019m about four years old, wearing a pink party dress and a long-sleeve flannel shirt underneath. Years later, I asked my mother about it. \u201cYou refused to put on your dress. That was the compromise.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was upset in third grade when my father made my older brother and his friend Brad stop playing tackle football with me. Flag football only. When I was in sixth grade, my father lectured my brother about not throwing the baseball too hard at me after dinner when we played catch in our yard. So we waited until Pop went back indoors and resumed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I played tons of sports in high school and played tennis competitively in the 18-and- Unders. People finally stopped calling me a Tom-Boy, but that hardly helped. When I tottered downstairs to our front hall one evening in the 11th grade, wearing a red chiffon dress and black heels for ballroom dancing\/etiquette class, which I attended with my older brother, he yelled, \u201cLook, it\u2019s Minnie Mouse!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I always thought there were boys and there were girls and then there was me, somewhere in the middle. Is that because everyone called me a Tom-Boy? Or something deeper? I was always attracted to guys, so that was that. What was there to think about? I just felt different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I was living in Montana in my twenties, I stayed once with two friends my age at their ranch. They were married and their uncle was visiting. I was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, and had my hair pulled up under a cap. Their uncle, who had recently retired from a lifetime career as a prison guard and wore the steel-toed shoes to prove it, looked at me, looked away and looked back again. He turned to them, \u201cIs that your boy?\u201d I\u2019m not exactly shapely, but still. Did that make me a twelve-year-old boy?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What was this all about? A question of gender identity? Or just a girl who loved sports as a kid and hated dresses?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does it matter? I don\u2019t know. All I know is for the first time ever I want to be a ballerina. Oh, and I also want to learn how to box. Something else I\u2019ve never done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a kid, I was never a ballerina in a fluffy tutu. I hated dresses. I played with stuffed animals, not dolls. I grew up being called a Tom-Boy. But recently, I stumbled into a Ballet Barre Workout class at my health club, when I was late for the class I meant to attend, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":144,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","event_title":"","event_details":"","event_timezone":"","event_gmap":"","event_image":"","event_image_url":"","event_calendar_link":"","event_location":"","event_location_name":"","event_location_address":"","event_location_unit":"","event_location_city":"","event_location_state":"","event_location_country":"","event_location_zip":"","event_datetime_with_summary":"","event_datetime":"","event_date":"","event_time":"","event_date_type":"","event_rulesummary":"","event_ticket_rsvp":"","event_capacity":"","event_capacity_remaining":"","event_capacity_sold":"","event_sold_out":"","event_low_stock":"","event_ticket_count":"","event_ticket_summary":"","event_sales_start":"","event_sales_end":"","event_ticket_price_from":"","event_ticket_price_to":"","event_ticket_price_range":"","event_date_year":"","event_date_month":"","event_date_month_short":"","event_date_day":"","event_date_day_name":"","event_date_iso":"","event_rsvp_capacity":"","event_rsvp_remaining":"","event_rsvp_going":"","event_rsvp_full":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.sarahignatius.com\/staging\/4657\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Ballerina-in-BoxingGloves-Stock-Photo.jpg?fit=866%2C1300&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahignatius.com\/staging\/4657\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahignatius.com\/staging\/4657\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahignatius.com\/staging\/4657\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahignatius.com\/staging\/4657\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahignatius.com\/staging\/4657\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahignatius.com\/staging\/4657\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":312,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahignatius.com\/staging\/4657\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions\/312"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahignatius.com\/staging\/4657\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahignatius.com\/staging\/4657\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahignatius.com\/staging\/4657\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahignatius.com\/staging\/4657\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}