This past holiday season, I had an amazing opportunity to see my youngest brother perform in the Nutcracker for the Oakland Ballet. It was the first time since playing Fritz and other supporting characters as a young boy that he was given a paid position for spectacular lead roles. When I first saw him behind the sheer curtain in full costume for the big Christmas Eve show, he took my breath away. Unlike me, my older siblings, and our parents, he has the chiseled physique of a professionally trained dancer.
When he moves across stage, the athleticism coming out of his six foot frame is just as striking as the artistry. He even has a distinct urban-masculine style of dancing that separates him from the other young male dancers in his academy; you can’t help but notice the hip-hop under his pirouette.
Quite frankly, I’m not sure my little brother would have it any other way. He’s a great student, but he has always been one of the ‘cool’ boys too, more attracted to the kids breaking the rules and pushing the limits of parental authority than the ones dutifully studying afterschool. And since ballet doesn’t exactly scream urban schoolyard coolness for boys yet, he’s pioneering the model.
Even though I am significantly (uh-hm) older than him, I can totally relate. As fate would have it, the only girl in the family ended up pursuing a male-dominated weightlifting sport. …and as liberated as I’d like to sound on feminist issues, the truth is somewhere in the middle: I’m not 100% comfortable with the masculine image of kettlebell sport either. I understand why some women have shunned the idea in this country; it’s intimidating to see someone throw an iron ball weighing between 16-32 kgs overhead nearly 200 times. But, like my brother, I’m definitely finding my own way. It’s immensely rewarding to be a part of the first all-women Kettlebell Sport competition team. We spend much of our focus on technical mastery in order to improve our performance, but we’re also sneaking in new ways to illuminate our femininity on the platform, too.
This may not be Betty Friedan’s ideal way to trailblaze new territory, but I think she would applaud our achievements nonetheless.
When my father, of all people, enrolled his two youngest sons in ballet, our family was definitely caught off-guard. As progressive as we considered ourselves back then, the truth is that we come from a long line of Mexican-American-Chicano machismo, my father once chief among them. Yet, the wisdom of having already raised two older boys inspired him to make some changes this time around. My father was proud that his wife and older children rallied behind his radical idea, though I must admit we were relieved when he left it up to my little brothers to decide whether they wanted to continue.
Of course, ballet turned out to be nothing but a positive experience for them, but that’s not to say that the boys were immune to gender stereotyping here. Dance ended up being an area of their lives that they fiercely protected from their peers in the public school system. Rather than risk being harassed or ridiculed for being ‘ballerinas,’ both of them kept it a secret from their school friends for nearly twelve years.
“What if someone at school finds out?” my father once asked them.
“Then we’ll change schools,” the youngest replied.
Neither of them expressed interest in quitting ballet during their most formative adolescent years. I’m still amazed by the way my brothers navigate through their vastly different worlds. The eldest of the two wrote a fascinating essay about it for his college application to UC Berkeley. He compared himself to Superman living as Clark Kent with a hidden identity, furtively changing into tights behind closed doors, and purposely concealing his powerful ability to catch women in flight. It was a hilarious and thought provoking statement — a strong reminder that we still have a long way to go.
-Maya
