I’ve always had the impression that belly dancers were supposed to be a little on the heavy side, but I dined at a Turkish restaurant the other night that had a belly dancer and she was very lean. I looked on the net and started reading about different styles of belly dancing, thinking that a slim belly dancer might have been a western change to the tradition, but none of the sites mentioned anything about weight.
How dissapointing! Was she “Turkish”, a belly dance enthusiast, or just the only gal they could find to dance? The only one that I ever saw was a college professor that was an enthusiast. She wasn’t “heavy” (she was built like woman and not a supermodel however) and was blonde and very white (how dissapointing).
I probably should have put some smileys in that most. No offence to slender, blonde, pale women.
Depends on the country, it seems. I’ve seen Egyptian belly dancers that were pretty hefty, which (from the enthusiastic response they got) Egyptians seemed to like. I’ve also seen Iranian dancers that were damn curvaceous, which is more my style.
I don’t believe there are specific standards, but traditional Turkish/Middle Eastern standards of beauty did differ from contemporary American ones. There was a time when American women were often described as “disturbingly skinny” by many [but certainly not all] men in the Middle East. I interpreted “disturbingly” to mean that they found them attractive, but in a an ‘odd, disturbing’ manner.
I knew some belly dancers in Cambridge MA in the late 70s/early 80s. Some of the heftier ones were openly dismissive of skinny women belly dancing. (They were also [considerably less] dismissive of the pale local college girls the restaurant sometimes hired to supplement the regulars.) They made various claims, ranging from “the right look” to “the necessary body type to dance well”.
At the time (I was but a kid) I thought it was thinly veiled jealousy, but I have also heard similar sentiments voiced in many other cities since – by men as well as women. I’m not of Middle East descent, so I can only report what I’ve heard in my travels.
I have a friend who dances professionally, and she complains about being too thin for the ab isolations / ripples to look their best. I offered to give her a few dozen pounds…but we couldn’t figure out how to transfer the weight sigh <grin>
I actually do good ab isolations / ripples, I learned how to do it in rehab, kept me from being totally bored for a few afternoons. Now if I could just actually move to dance I think I would have a blast, it looks fun=)
The belly dancers I saw in Egypt wern’t really slim but wern’t fat either.