Dear Diary,

I’m so sick and tired of advertising and media companies disrespecting dancers. It’s absolutely ridiculous, lazy and offensive to the hundreds of talented, and gorgeous, dancers out there. After the Free People disaster a few years ago, I thought that perhaps things were looking up. But here comes Kendall Jenner, flapping her feet around like two fish gasping for their last breath of air in a Vogue commercial. Why does she need to be in ballet shoes and ballet clothes to talk about how she likes walking around outside? She could be wearing Loubotins, or those Gucci slippers that look like Donald Trump’s hair piece. Anything but pointe shoes. Her flailing and sickling is painful to watch. And it’s completely unnecessary. Now, I’m not blaming Kendall or the FP model that claimed she had been dancing since she was 3 (girl, bye). But apparel companies, agencies and casting companies need to get their sh*t together. If you want models, use models. If you want to simulate a dancer, use dancers. Dancers are beautiful, talented hardworking athletes and artists who rarely get a substantial paycheck. How difficult would it be to throw a couple hundred, or thousand, to a dancer to represent your product ? Apparently it’s extremely difficult, since no one is doing it. Smh. It just doesn’t make sense to me. It seems like dancing is such a popular thing to be doing, or pretending to be doing these days. Misty’s ads have really helped to expose dance and bring it into the social light. And yet these companies continue to be flippant and unconcerned when it comes to supporting and representing dancers.  Wells Fargo posted an ad stating ” A ballerina yesterday. An engineer today. Let’s get them ready for tomorrow”. Thankfully, we all know how full of sh*t Wells Fargo is, but seriously?! Who let them publish that?! “Wells Fargo. Scamming people today. Bankrupt tomorrow.” Didn’t have to be an engineer to figure that one out. If dancers had more celebrity, I don’t think we would be dealing with this as often as we do. You don’t see companies using ordinary models to simulate football players or basketball players. I’m tired of society viewing dance as a pseudo career, or just something pretty that anyone can do. Agencies, let Kendall model without pointe shoes on, and try to make an actual effort to contact real dancers in the future. And set me up in a meeting with the PR guy from Wells Fargo, and I’ll show him just how serious dancers can be.

Xoxo,

Mad Swan