In today’s world of stick-thin clothing and celebrity-endorsed plastic surgery, it’s easy for women everywhere to feel their natural self will never be enough. It is these insecurities that lead us down a twisted spiral of tearing ourselves down to a point where our womanly confidence is all but shattered.
There comes a time for women to realize enough is enough when it comes to berating themselves constantly. Luckily, a club at Ohio University has risen up as a voice of reason amongst such disparaging noise.
The Belly Dancing Club at OU encourages its members to forge confidence in both mind and body through the practice of the popular Middle Eastern dance.
Danielle Echols, president of the Belly Dancing Club, has achieved something that few are able to accomplish. She has created a positive environment where students can come and feel free of the judgments and pressures that life deals them.
When it comes to belly dancing, the movements are more focused on getting people to let go and leave all stress, worries and insecurities behind. The Belly Dancing Club works to establish that same mind set by inspiring members to forge a personal connection between the music and their bodies.
Echols, a junior studying Spanish and media studies, encourages members to express themselves freely through belly dancing by not focusing so much on what other people are doing but on their own individual movements. This becomes one of the major steps for the club in terms of forging a path toward higher self-esteem.
“However you choose to express yourself is how you choose to express yourself, not because somebody else is making you express yourself that way,” Echols said. “I really believe that only when you start comparing yourself to others, you feel less than what you are.”
The Belly Dancing Club stresses positive thinking as the crucial foothold for maintaining a high level of confidence. At each practice, members recite an ode to self, a saying that works to celebrate women and to strengthen self-acceptance.
The ode to self has inspired many belly dancing members, like Brittany Marxen, to relate the lessons of confidence learned at practice into everyday life.
“It’s really helping you find your voice as a woman to be positive towards the world and towards ourselves,” said Marxen, a sophomore studying psychology. “Because if we push ourselves down, then it’s easy for society to beat us down too.”
The motivation to form a belly-dancing club on campus originally emerged from the dorms. When Echols was a freshmen, she came to OU with a deep background in belly dance training. For her, it was a hobby and a treasured passion, one she couldn’t possibly let go when she came to college. She would continue to belly dance in her dorm room for fun, enticing her friends to join her while teaching them different moves.
Enthralled by Echol’s flowing movements and radiant confidence, her friends persuaded her to get a club started in order to teach other women on campus who would be interested in learning the exotic art of belly dance and working to improve their own confidence.
Echols ultimately launched the belly dancing club with her co-founders Whitney Clayton and Gaby Smith in the winter of 2010. Since its start, the club has only continued to pick up more momentum on campus. While the club has about 11 members who come to practice regularly, Echols has seen up to 20 people come to the practices before.
The club put on its first belly dancing performance last May, a grand festival featuring professional belly dancers from both inside and outside of the Athens area as well as a student troupe, African drum group and Egyptian musicians.
For members like Smith, the performances have been a huge factor in reaching a higher level of confidence.
“You kind of just learn to not care what people think, and it gets you to this place where you just wanna be free and have fun,” said Smith, a junior studying communication studies and minoring in sociology.
Through the Belly Dancing Club, members don’t only learn about improving their self-esteem, but also get a taste of culture thrown into the mix. Echols strives to educate the group on the cultural aspects behind belly dancing, and she tries to get them involved in discussions about cultural events at OU through belly dancing practices.
The Belly Dancing Club even features an Arabic phrase as a part of its name “Habibti Rakkasah,” which means darling dancer. For Echols, it was the perfect way to embed the aspects of Middle Eastern culture even further into the club’s message.
If there’s one thing Echols can’t stand, it’s the misconceptions people hold about belly dancing. For many, it’s seen as a sexual dance with women dressed scantily clad, showing off their dancing solely for the pleasure of men. Those who believe such notions, however, have never delved into the true culture behind the dance.
Belly dancing is not all about sex. Instead, it’s a dance done for women by women. It’s a celebration of women coming together and rejoicing in their womanhood and their lives. While the dance may come off as sexual, it’s in a different sense than what most people think.
“It’s somewhat sexual, but it’s more of a confidence in your sexuality,” Smith said. “Be proud of it, and be proud to be a woman.”
Despite such misconceptions, Echols takes comfort in the fact that the members strive to be respectful of the true cultural ideas of belly dancing. When it comes down to it, it’s not about how good or how beautiful of a belly dancer you may be, but how much effort you put into trying.
“I don’t expect you to be fabulous, but I expect you to try.” Echols said. “Seeing what I love and seeing how other people have started to love it too is probably the most rewarding thing.”
Upcoming Peformances
Meetings
Wednesdays 6 to 7 p.m.
Kantner Hall 306
2nd Annual Belly Dancing Festival
May 14, 4 to 6 p.m.
Baker Theater
Arabian Nights
May 26, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.
Baker Ballroom