“My daughter is unique, energetic and perfect in my eyes. Her ability to dance is not impacted by her hair, skin or physical beauty.”
Kids’ concerts are fun. They require music and a bunch of small people clumsily dancing around a stage, usually out of time and with inexplicable facial expressions.
Apparently now they also require spray tans.
But one Adelaide mum is railing against a dance school edict that all girls have a spray tan for an upcoming acrobatic dance competition.
She says her 11-year-old “doesn’t need a spray tan – they’re not on Dancing With the Stars”.
“My daughter is unique, energetic and perfect in my eyes. Her ability to dance is not impacted by her hair, skin or physical beauty,” she told Mamamia.
“What message would I be sending to my 11 year old if I took her to a beauty salon for a spray tan? ‘You, the you I adore and think is more perfect than a rainbow, are not good enough in your own skin’. I am pretty sure that would undo the years of body-loving goodness I have been showering down on her.”
Related: WATCH: The girl who makes sitting through a dance recital worthwhile.
The mother, who did not want to be named to protect her daughter’s privacy, says the dance school’s culture effectively body-shames young girls by forcing them to alter their appearance.
“What if she had a scar or birthmark? Would she need to cover that up? What if she had skin darker than a spray tan?”
“She is a healthy, happy, vibrant little girl and the concept of taking her in and getting somebody to do a spray tan on her just makes me… I just can’t get my head around it. Do I put her in her underwear and let somebody spray tan her? It’s just, ewww.”
She says she doesn’t agree with the spray tan requirement on so many levels, especially because it makes the focus more on the girls’ appearance, rather than the dancing.
“I know they’ve always asked for make-up and to have their hair the same way, and I can see some of that is about uniformity and the visual spectacular on stage – and I get that – but it’s like I’ve gotten to a point where, the lipstick I can handle, but spray tan? We’ve got to draw a line somewhere and I just think that spray tan is it,” she says.
“It just seems so unnecessary for two-and-a-half minutes of dancing.”
While most of the other mums have no problem with the requirement, this mother says she is considering having her daughter show up without a tan. Or maybe not…
Related: 4 year-old has better dance moves than you ever will.
“I’ve kind of got to a point where I just need to figure out if I’m being ridiculous… am I being a bit precious?”
“Maybe I just get her a spray tan and be done with it? Or do I make her be the odd one out, I find that really hard. I don’t want her to be the one that stands out like a light bulb because everyone else has their orange spray tans on. But I look at her and she just turned 11 in March, she shouldn’t be at the spray tan stage yet.”
According to US show Dance Moms, these outfits are normal for junior dancers:
Dance Moms
Do you think young girl dancers should have spray tans?
Top Comments
I have done calisthenics since a young age. I started before the days of spray tans, so we would just tan our legs. I never, ever, ever thought of it as "my legs are too pale". I ALWAYS knew that it was because the back of the stage is a black curtain and stage lights make your skin look MUCH paler than it truly is. If you make a little tiny mistake with footwork and you are STARK white compared to the black back curtain, it will be much more obvious without a tan. Tanning isn't to make each girl look better or more attractive, it's to minimise the impact of poor uniformity. Just like the horrid stage makeup dancers wear, it's not to make you more attractive, it's to make it visible that your eyes are open to an 80 year old adjudicator with poor vision seated 30m back from the stage. Now that there are spray tans, my coaches say it's 100% our own choice and I have never been told I have to get one. We all get them though, as we want to be uniform to maximise our winning potential. Not because we want to look good. Because if we wanted to look good we wouldn't be doing silly outdated moves with weird apparatus in leotards made in the 90s in front of an audience comprised of 200 or so bitter old ladies and 3 sleeping dads.
I had this problem in my late teens when my coach insisted on it. I don't dance there anymore. She said everyone was doing it, professional dancers, higher level dancers etc. So I asked a friend who went to a huge dance school that competed at a high level, many of the girls performed professionally, etc. She said some girls chose to get a tan but it was by no means expected and she seemed to find it a bit strange that my coach was expecting it.
I hated it. I'm quite happy with my skin tone (I am quite pale) and it is sensitive. We had three competitions in three weeks and were expected to get a tan every time, the tan on top of tan made my skin so itchy after the second one that I had scratch marks on my legs after the second one because I'd been scratching so much. Then my coach got sh-tty when I refused to get another tan for the third competition, instead borrowing some tinted body moisturiser from a helpful and understanding teammate.
I found the whole thing so inconvenient, because I'm happy with my skin tone I hated having fake tanned arms to go to work and uni etc. I hated the implication that my natural skin tone wasn't good enough to perform and I had to put myself through beauty salon hell just to go onstage. It's not just the appointment where you have to stand in front of some judgemental beauty therapist who looks you up and down - oh no, it doesn't stop there. Then I had to get up at 5am to rinse off the excess (I usually showered in the evenings because I already had to get up so early for uni), and it lasted for a few days then went patchy if you didn't attempt to "maintain" it (maintain the thing I didn't want on my skin!)
I was 19 at the time. I am horrified at the idea of young girls being expected to do it. Tanned skin should not be considered something to aim for or we'll have girls going back to trying to get a real tan and ending up with skin cancer.
If some girls like to get spray tans for performances, good for them. I personally hate them with a passion. It should be a choice.