Sugar Plum Fairy Ballerina Shrugs Off Weighty Criticism

(Dec. 13) -- A dancer in the New York City Ballet's production of "The Nutcracker," criticized for looking "as if she'd eaten one sugar plum too many," said the review was embarrassing but she's moved past that single opinion and isn't looking for an apology.

The critique last last month about the body of dancer Jenifer Ringer, who portrays the Sugar Plum Fairy, highlighted the pressure on ballerinas to be thin and set off an online uproar, with many commentators blasting New York Times writer Alastair Macaulay as cruel and hurtful.

Ringer, though, said the issue of whether dancers' bodies should be open to criticism "is a really complex question."

"As a dancer, I do put myself out there to be criticized, and my body is part of my art form," she said this morning on NBC's "Today" show. "At the same time, I'm not overweight. I do have, I guess a more womanly body type than the stereotypical ballerina."

Ringer, who has suffered from anorexia and compulsive overeating in the past, said the review made her feel bad.

"But I really had to tell myself it's one person's opinion out of the 2,000 people that were there that night," said Ringer, 37. "So where I am in my life right now, I was able to kind of move forward from it."

And, she said, she was pleasantly caught off guard by all the online support that came her way.

"It's made me feel very loved and supported," she said. "The outpouring of people that leapt to my defense was wonderful."

She spoke too of the pressures dancers face. "It is a field where our bodies are important," she said. "As dancers, we're taught to try to be perfect in every way."

Ringer said she wasn't prepared to deal with "just being in an adult performing world" when she became a professional dancer at age 16.

"My coping mechanism turned into eating disorders and body image issues," she said. "For me, I think it was an inability to cope."

Actress Natalie Portman, who lost 20 pounds to play a struggling ballerina in the current movie "Black Swan," came to Ringer's defense, saying in an interview last month, "In what other field is it acceptable to judge artists by how big they are? It was just amazing all of the pressure on dancers to starve themselves."

But Macaulay, noting the criticism his remark generated, wrote in a follow-up story that a dancer's body is relevant. "If you want to make your appearance irrelevant to criticism, do not choose ballet as a career," he wrote.

Ringer said she doesn't want an apology, noting that Macaulay's job is to give his opinion.

"So he got to put his opinion in the paper, but everybody else had a different opinion as well," she said.

Ringer noted that the New York City Ballet is made up of dancers of every body type: tall, petite, athletic, womanly and waif-like. "They can all dance like crazy. They're all gorgeous," she said.

"Seeing these beautiful woman with these different bodies all dancing to this gorgeous music -- that's what should be celebrated," she said.