looking at myself

Photographs by Saranna Zhang

By Saranna Zhang

I grew up in a dance studio. 

I spent more time at a dance studio than I did in my own house for a big part of my life, and the people at dance were my best friends, my mentors, my home. My weekends were filled with boba runs between rehearsals to the tea shop downstairs, bandaging up damaged feet after pointe class, and tossing around Chinese silk sleeves or umbrellas or fans. I spent entire days holed up in the studio, sometimes collapsing from exhaustion on the floor of the tiny dressing room, my bun coming loose and every muscle hurting. Everything about me was shaped between that studio’s marble floors and lavender-painted walls. 

But, at the same time, dance made it impossible to look into the mirror without feeling deeply upset and hateful towards the reflection looking back at me. In a dance studio, sometimes all you can see is yourself. The floor-to-ceiling mirrors are there for that reason—so every movement, every line, every curve can be scrutinized and picked apart. Your own reflection is inescapable and how you look is everything—the lines of your extensions, the arch of your feet, the angle of your neck. Your body is not your body, but rather an instrument to be shaped and molded to please the viewer’s eye, something that can be endlessly improved and fixed. 

The same hours I spent learning choreography and honing my technique were also spent staring at every imperfection I had on my body. The shape of my legs, the lumpiness of my stomach, the flabbiness of my arms, the blurriness of my jawline. Everyone was thinner, and everyone always thought I could be thinner. There were endless offhand comments from teachers, asking if I’d gained weight every other time I saw them. “胖了吗?,” they’d say. I could only smile uncomfortably and say, “Maybe just a little.” 

Going to a Chinese dance studio was the perfect mix of toxicity–the meeting of dance and Asian culture’s mutual obsession with thinness. The scale at the foot of my mirror in my room always seemed to taunt me whenever I looked at myself in the morning, and the huge, unforgiving mirrors in the studio always seemed to highlight all the worst things I saw about my body, throwing them back in my face. All of the adults I was surrounded by—from my dance teachers to my parents—prized being thin above almost anything else, 

At home, my mom was prone to saying, “Isn’t it too late for you to be eating? You’ll get fat.” “Lose just a little more weight and you’ll be perfect,” she said. 

Hearing that idea constantly—either explicitly or implicitly—convinced me that it was true. I thought I would be perfect if I could just be 5 pounds, 10 pounds, 15 pounds lighter. Then maybe my muscles would be more defined. I wouldn’t have a double chin in photos. My stomach would be flat and toned. My body was the only thing wrong with me, yet it was the hardest thing to change. I came to equate my sense of self-worth with how I looked and how much I weighed, and the frustration of just never feeling quite thin enough hung over me constantly.  

It felt like a never-ending battle with my own psyche. I would stand and look at my reflection, saying to myself, “You’re perfect just this way. You don’t need to lose weight to be beautiful.” But even coming out of my own mouth, those words were so hard to believe, especially after years and years of conditioning to the contrary. My gut reaction was always to criticize first and admire second, both with myself and other people. I was tired of hating what I saw and tearing myself apart. 

When I  started losing weight from stress and sleep deprivation, I finally realized that I wasn’t happier when I was thinner—I was more tired, angry, and anxious than I had ever been in my life, even though I was also the skinniest I had ever been. But the road to that realization was long, and I still fight my old habits every day. The urge to pick apart every piece of myself is always there. I catch myself cringing when old pants don’t fit or spiraling when I have to order a bigger size than I remember, and I am constantly reminded that my body is always going to change in ways I cannot predict or control.

Embracing the reflection that I see in the mirror is possibly one of the hardest things I’ve ever tried to do for myself. It is strange to be confronted with your own image, to be faced with everything that you hate and hide away and try to forget. To look myself in the eye and truly see beauty and joy is immensely liberating, and I hope that, instead of being a rarity, it becomes my norm.

Saranna Zhang is a sophomore in CAS studying International Relations and Journalism originally from Houston, TX. This is her second year writing for Generasian, and she loves the opportunity to exercise a more creative side of her writing. She also loves art, dancing, and music, and spends her free time choreographing for the Asian Fusion Dance club.