r/casualiama • u/Organic_Tiger_1201 • 1d ago
Trigger Warnings I spent my entire childhood in the 2000s as an elite competitive dancer in circuits winning Showstopper/ Nexstar Platinums. AMA about the costumes, the abuse, the routines, travel, and so on.
2002-2010. It was awful and the worst part of my childhood. Im not going to reveal too much personal info obviously. The studio luckily went under about 12 years ago so a lot of info about it is scrubbed from the internet but my name does come up in Showstopper archives. Anyway, I find it cathartic to talk about so let er rip! Also my health isn't too good rn so I might take me a minute to respond to all.
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u/Minimum_Magician5037 1d ago
What was the abuse like?
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u/Organic_Tiger_1201 1d ago
Gosh where do I begin. The dance instructor was incredibly abusive to all of us. We all feared her. Everyday I would come home crying, and I would cry before getting to practice . I begged my mom , do not let me go in there but she made me go because she was worried I would get fat if I didn't have this. The instructor would get in our face, nose to nose and yell, she would subject us to working out past exhaustion if we did something she didn't like if one girl didn't smile during the whole routine or messed up by not having a straight arm or follow the music que or miss her placement all of us would get punished by having to either do wall sits, V ups, or doing laps around the studio, she would demean us, those of us that we're injured had to keep working out and do the routines anyway. We would have to be poked and prodded and touched and stripped in front of everyone without concent for costume measurements. Mind you , I have autism and all of us were six years old when we started competing. All of us had to wear outfits that were extremely inappropriate and have thick makeup that irritate our skin and eyes. There are pictures of me with the classic thousand yard stare. I would be bribed by family members to keep going. When I developed major depression in fifth grade , that's when it finally ended , and I was able to quit.
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u/Organic_Tiger_1201 11h ago
Also worth mentioning! I had to wake up early before every performance to have this irritating makeup put on my face and my mom would threaten to beat my ass if the eyeliner or lash glue made me tearup/ cry bc then she'd have to start over.
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u/randomdude5566 1d ago
What are Showstopper and Nextstar Platinums?
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u/Organic_Tiger_1201 1d ago
Showstopper and nexstar are large national dance competition circuits the scoring scale can go anywhere from silver to crystal depending on the particular circuit , but platinums or double platinums mean that performance reached a high threshold separate to other routines scored in the same category. I don't exactly remember the ends and outs of it , because I was just a kid but I know at least some categories went off of age division. I was one of the 5 dancers out of about 15 in my group that were scored separately for precise execution.
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u/superflippy 1d ago
What was the craziest costume you had to wear?
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u/Organic_Tiger_1201 1d ago
All of them where insane the worst was something that looked like a tube top, booty shorts, fishnets, huge fake lashes( a staple in every costume). The ugliest looked like a cheap loose pirate costume but we are suppose to be orphans? It was very odd but at least that one wasn't objectifying.
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u/FAlady 14h ago
Eww, seems like pedo bait. Were pedos a part of your audience?
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u/Organic_Tiger_1201 11h ago
100000% it was. I'm very positive of it bc thousands of people were watching this including male judges and it never sat right with me even if i didn't know what a pedo was. I think statically it was impossible for there not to be any. I was not a gender conforming child, I knew deep down that I liked other girls so the idea that I had to wear these things hypersexual outfits that turned guy's on like I saw in movies made me feel worthless and disgusting even though I never really thought those guys could be adults at the time. Looking back i feel the most uncomfortable about the carnival cruise performance bc the majority were people outside of the dance profession there. We were entertaining a lot of drunk rich men. We were fucking six doing splits and other compromising movements in these outfits and I'm still angry that no one in our lives saw anything wrong with it. Completely stripped of my dignity, I was absolutely nothing more than a performance monkey for people to ogle at both sexually and non.
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u/emceelokey 10h ago
What was the incentive for your parents to push you to do these performances? Were they paid gigs at least?
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u/Organic_Tiger_1201 9h ago
That's another crazy part of this! They lost money. Every parent had to pay the studio, pay for the costumes, make up, media, and travel. My parents weren't well off by any means either. Everyone in my family chipped in so I could keep doing this and they took pride in it bc I was so good. But I wasn't good at that shit bc of talent, I performed well bc i was in constant fear. My dad since I was born would go to work, come home, eat dinner, play his computer games, go to bed and repeat. He was not much of an active person in my childhood or his marriage. This was all my mother's doing. The worst thing you could be as her child was unattractive and the best thing you could be was her emotional spouse which I was from the beginning. I was a tall skinny child anyway but she never wanted me to become fat as i was developing so put me in sports at first but it wasn't rigorous enough for a child so then she put me in competitive dance. We had a rough relationship for a long while but once she started to see how wrong all of this was we began to have a better one.
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u/doinmybest4now 1d ago
What were some of the injuries you and the others suffered?
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u/Organic_Tiger_1201 1d ago edited 23h ago
Well, for me personally, I developed something called kyphosis early as my body was still growing but a few girls had broken bones arms/ legs and still had to push through. In my teens after I quit, I developed anorexia due to the psychological abuse that's still affected me heavily. I'm not connected with the girls now so who knows what long term injuries they faced but yeah it was brutal.
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u/thatbalconyjumper 1d ago
Do you feel like your experience is similar to that of the girls in the reality show Dance Moms? I always felt so sad for those kids. Do you have a positive relationship with your family these days, especially since they pressured/forced you to continue with dance?