Trigger Warning: in our conversation, we discuss eating disorders, food intake, and over-exercise. Please take care of yourselves as you listen and avoid if these topics might be triggering for you.
Everyone welcome my dear friend Katelyn Stoss to A Broadway Body: Continued Conversations! She’s a choreographer, director, creator, educator, and performer. Katelyn and I have known each other since our Freshman year of college at Wichita State University, and it’s safe to say that we’ve witnessed each other through many different phases of life over the years.
She’s just a wealth of knowledge as both an educator of performers and performer herself and how body image ties into it all. Our conversation went on for eons (because, of course, we’re besties), but I wanted to share a snippet of it with you here.
“I don't remember a specific time of it being like, ‘Nope, this is no more. I can't do this,’ because when it's all around you and that's what everybody's doing, and the ones who seem to be doing it the best are being rewarded, it’s hard to convince yourself that you need to stop.” - Katelyn Stoss
Katelyn Stoss: When you're in a dance studio specifically, like you already have a mirror in front of you all of the time. So you're painfully aware. You're using that mirror as a tool the entire time you're there to correct and to learn how to self-correct and to feel the difference of like your body positions and things. So of course you're noticing as your body grows and changes and how the girls all around you, in my case, were much thinner and leaner. And I'm a short, stocky athletic build, and I remember distinctly in college being -- one of my best friends was in a ballet class with me and then also a modern class, and we lovingly called ourselves The Back Row Beauties, but that was the subtext of it was that we were not going to be in the front because we were not built to be in the front, not because we were incapable of doing all of the techniques correctly or doing them beautifully. It just -- we were well aware because we were both studio kids.
And on top of seeing yourself in that mirror over and over -- I mean, I have vivid memories of working out in the studio, you know, doing conditioning and being on my back. And like, we were stretching after doing a bunch of abs and pushups and things, and one of the guest teachers kind of took – like, really set in about how bad corn was for us and how fattening corn was and how we shouldn't eat it.
Megan Gill: Like, what?
Katelyn Stoss: And I'm like, maybe 10 or 11 at the time.
Megan Gill: Oh, my god.
Katelyn Stoss: Like, really young. And I'm sitting here thinking, “Corn's a vegetable! What do you mean?” you know?
Megan Gill: Yeah, especially because I'm from the Midwest where corn is a part of our culture.
Katelyn Stoss: Right! I'm like, “Eh, it's summertime ,girl. We are eating that corn!” I'm over here just trying to stretch my hamstrings, but I'm, like, getting all of this messaging that, like, “Oh, something that I didn't even realize wasn't technically healthy, now that's off limits too, you know?
Megan Gill: Right, and I feel like it just keeps getting worse and worse.
Katelyn Stoss: For sure
Megan Gill: The more we take those and the more we realize, “Oh, so I can't, I can't eat this. I can't eat that. Oh, I shouldn't eat this.” Like, especially in the dance world where it's --
Katelyn Stoss: It snowballs. It snowballs until you're eating rice cakes and, what, raisins, I don't know, with peanut butter?
Megan Gill: Celery? I’m having bad memories.
Katelyn Stoss: Celery. Let's talk about our top three, probably, in college: celery, peanut butter, rice cakes. That's what people were eating in between dance classes and on breaks. And it wasn't like that was their snack. Sure, we would say it was our snack. It was our lunch. It was our breakfast. It was what we came home to in our cabinets at home, and then we’d, like, pretend that it was dinner.
Megan Gill: Right.
Katelyn Stoss: Like, it's not.
Megan Gill: Which is just really not okay.
Katelyn Stoss: No, we were not fueling.
Megan Gill: No, exactly! And that's part of the issue too is that it's really devastating that we were not actually satiating our bodies and giving ourselves enough energy go and move as much as we were, specifically when you're in a college program --
Katelyn Stoss: Yes.
Megan Gill: -- where you are dancing all the time and you're walking to all these classes and you're conditioning and probably going to the gym on your own time. It's like, this is not okay. Where's the education around how to actually fuel our bodies, like you said, with the proper nutrition? Yeah.
Katelyn Stoss: In a healthy way.
Megan Gill: Right.
Katelyn Stoss: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that you have something to actually burn and then you are building the appropriate muscles and those things. Like, sure, some of us were getting pretty thin, but we weren't strong. We weren't, you know — maybe we were looking better on the outside but we were crumbling on the inside.
Megan Gill: Oh, absolutely 100%, and it does just snowball, like you said, to a point where — was there a point for you where you realized, “Okay, I cannot do this anymore”? Was there like a bit of a breaking point that you can recall?
Katelyn Stoss: I mean, I know that I personally went through bouts of bulimia briefly in high school and then it came on pretty strong my freshman year of college once, like, the reality of those pressures of if I wanted to have a career in this I was, I guess, going to have to change something, I don't know.
I don't remember a specific time of it being like, “Nope, this is no more. I can't do this,” because when it's all around you and that's what everybody's doing and the ones who seem to be doing it the best are being rewarded, it's really hard to convince yourself that you need to stop. You know what I mean?
Megan Gill: Yeah.
Katelyn Stoss:I don't think that I really got out of any of that until I had graduated and started living an adult life on my own. And I was like, “Oh, you know, I probably could eat.”
Megan Gill: Yeah. My god, yes.
Katelyn Stoss: Do you remember a specific time where you were like, “I'm not doing this anymore”?
Megan Gill: I do, and it was after college. It was actually after — the summer after we graduated, I had done a show, and during that show I was eating paleo.
Katelyn Stoss: Oh
Megan Gill: And truly, for the amount that I was moving my body in, like — we had a two-week rehearsal process —
Katelyn Stoss: Yeah.
Megan Gill: — and two weekends of shows or something. In that month span of time, I was not eating enough for the amount that I was moving and dancing. And that's when I really came to a bit of a binge after that, when I decided to go off paleo, and I had this awakening —
Katelyn Stoss: Right.
Megan Gill: — this moment that I was kind of out of the program and out of that show and out of that away from those other performers and teachers and peers and people that we looked up to and all of that, that I kind of was able to recognize something was wrong and that I cannot —
Katelyn Stoss: Yeah.
Megan Gill: — live like this and that this is actually not okay for my body.
Katelyn Stoss: When you can separate and, like, get out of the game of it, I think that's what changes.
Megan Gill:Yeah.
Katelyn Stoss: And I think that's also probably, you know, when you're in middle school and high school, you're surrounded by people your age all day, every day at school. So it's in front of you. Like, all of the inequities, not even just weight, right, or whatever body image issue you might have. It might be that you don't feel like you have the right clothes, or you don't live on the right side of the tracks, if you will, or you're not athletic enough, you're not whatever enough. All of those things, I think, are heightened whenever you're in an environment where you feel like you're kind of playing a strategy in order to make it to the next step.
And especially in a college program or something like that, you're doing anything you can to harness those few opportunities you get to perform because those are going to be A) your resume builder, B) your experience. And if you don't get cast in a show, then you're not getting your experience and you're not getting your resume. So then once you graduate, you don't have much to show for the last four years, or however long it took you. And then you're going into the world with, what —
Megan Gill: Oh, my god, yeah.
Katelyn Stoss: — if you're trying to pursue performing? And so, you're willing to do things that you wouldn't do after the fact, right? Because after the fact you control, “What auditions do I want to go to? What projects do I want to be a part of?” You have more agency in it. Whereas when you're a part of a program, you're like, “Okay, we do X amount of shows a year. So I need to try to make one of them. And we do this many dance pieces a year,” or whatever. Whatever your course may be, you know, that it's limited. And so, you have to play the game. And if that game is, “I'm going to do everything I can to manipulate my body to look the way that my professors want it to look so that I get cast in a role, then I'm going to do it.”
Megan Gill: Yeah, I’m just, like, ugh, feeling all of the things over here because it's really — when you lay it out like that, that's exactly what's happening, and it's just really fucking sad.
Katelyn Stoss: It is.
Megan Gill: And my big question is how the hell do we change those systems? It's very systemic in the fact that —
Katelyn Stoss: It’s so systemic.
Megan Gill: — the hierarchy is telling you that you need to have this type of body and weigh X amount in some programs, I know. I don't know if that was as strong in our program.
Katelyn Stoss: Thank God.
Megan Gill: But when someone's telling you your body needs to look a certain way, you know in your brain, “Well, I need to lose weight.”
Katelyn Stoss: Right. Right. And you're paying money. That's the thing.
Megan Gill: Ugh, yes!
Katelyn Stoss: If you're paying money to be there and you know — I mean, I'll speak for myself, but I'm still a debt from my degree, right? I think the majority of us are. And when you know you are putting that much money in that many years of your life on the line, it just adds so much more.
Now, if you are fortunate enough to have parents who foot the bill, then guess how much mental space you have free to not have to work several jobs while you're in school, to not have to stress as much. You can have a healthier mindset, and probably approach, even if you have physical body goals, because I'm not saying it's bad. It's not bad to say, you know, “I'd like to be at a healthier weight for me,” or “I'd like to feel better when I'm moving,” or “I'd like to be stronger at X, Y, and Z,” right?
There's healthy goals for physical that aren't necessarily, like, physical appearance or whatever. There's healthy body goals, and then there's an unhealthy body of goals. And I think a lot of it depends on your personal situation and how desperate you are to reach it, if that makes sense.
Megan Gill: Right. Yeah, absolutely.
Katelyn Stoss: And you were talking about like our program didn't have a weigh-in, right. But we had lots of things said to us. I know you and I have a couple similar stories, but I sat in a meeting with a professor once where I was told I needed to decide, am I going to be a chorus girl or am I going to be the fat girl? So I literally was told I needed to either gain — what was it — gain 10 pounds or lose 20.
Megan Gill: Mind you, we are 20 years old. Like…?
Katelyn Stoss: Yeah. Yeah. Not, “Let me help you find roles that would be a great fit for you, for your voice, for your acting style, for your personality.”
Megan Gill: Right. It was always about the body.
Katelyn Stoss: No, no, no. “You need to decide, are you going to be Tracy Turnblad or are you going to be in 42nd street?” Like that's what it was.
Megan Gill: Yes. That’s definitely what it was, and what's so okay about that is, then, we learned to equate that this whole art form is — I mean, yes, it is very much body work. That's what it is. We are literally using ourselves to tell stories and our voices to tell stories and our movement and all of this stuff. We're just taught over and over and over again that it's about how we look and that that's what all of this is riding on and that's what the focus is, and it's less about my voice and less about what roles I even want to play or where I see myself fitting in the industry after I graduate here.
Katelyn Stoss: You can't even think about it.
Megan Gill: And it becomes either I’m the character actor or I'm the chorus girl or I'm the ingenue.
Katelyn Stoss: Bingo.
Megan Gill: And guess what? You have to fit a bill for each one within our program
Katelyn Stoss: Yeah, and then when they come out with whatever shows are coming up right in your program, then you're like, “Well, there's my one shot or I have no shots because they've already told me I don't fit that bill.” So you're already set up to, well, usually fail. Let's get real.
Katelyn Stoss is a choreographer, a director, a creator, a performer, and a teacher. Growing up, the dance studio wasn't the place she found easy success, but rather the place she learned the most important lessons in life. With over two decades of training in Tap, Jazz, Ballet, Musical Theatre, Hip Hop, Contemporary, and Modern, she’s had the opportunity to teach ages 2 to 72.
Katelyn believes that dance, akin to music, is both sound and silence. Dance is crucial to seamless and effective storytelling. It innately unifies us beyond the boundaries of language and culture. But most of all, dance is FUN! ...and should be enjoyed as often as possible.
Website: www.katelynstoss.com
Email: katelynstoss@gmail.com
Instagram: @katelynstoss
YouTube: www.youtube.com/@katelynstoss
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While I’m not a licensed therapist, registered dietician, or medical health professional and cannot speak to body image topics from a clinical, trauma-informed place, I am an expert of lived experience. I’m an academic of my own body, and I’m passionate about facilitating conversations with other humans about their relationships with their bodies. I believe it’s important to continue conversations about healthy body image in creative spaces as a means to heal individuals as well as the collective whole. But just know the information presented in this medium is not professional mental health advice or medical advice, and any questions or concerns you have should always be directed to your health providers.
