Everyone please welcome my college friend and fellow creative Ashley Justice to A Broadway Body: Continued Conversations! Ashley and I went to Wichita State University together circa 2010-2014-ish, and this girl knows the body!!! She was in the dance department, and I was in the musical theatre department. Ashley is an insanely talented dancer and choreographer, and I had the pleasure of taking many a dance class alongside her.

Ashley is one of the first people who opened up to me about her experience in our college program when I was crowdfunding for “A Broadway Body” back in 2021. She shared what she’d gone through during our time in college, and I opened up about my experiences and those of friends of mine, and I knew I had to create the film to expose what goes on behind the closed doors of collegiate dance, theatre, and musical theatre programs.

Ashley is a dancer, choreographer, SLT instructor, and barre instructor in New York City. She’s found her own community of advocates for her work in NYC, but that hasn’t come without its share of emotional labor. Ashley’s lens on having to carry the burden of being a dancer in a societally unconventional “dancer body” is extremely important and nuanced in a culture that lumps certain body types with certain professions. I hope you walk away changed after hearing Ashley’s story!

“ I’ve been told more than once that I have like a Black girl body, right? And that is racist. Not that it’s racist to me, right. It’s racist to Black people and to Black women, and also depending on who it’s coming from it’s an insult, right? And it doesn’t insult me. I don’t feel any insult being compared to Black women at all. But if it’s coming from a white person, I know that that’s an insult, right? It’s a microaggression, and it’s not a microaggression — I mean, I guess it’s a microaggression to me, but it’s a microaggression of putting Black people beneath you and then putting me in that category with Black people that are underneath you. So that’s a whole other layer that I’ve talked about with friends and with people, and it’s why, in dance, the people that’ve encouraged me the most are usually people of color. White people in dance are genuinely not my advocates. I don’t try to have them be my advocates, and I don’t seek out people of color for that. The people that have become closer, given me opportunities, or taken the time to ask me what I want have always been people of color and never white people.“

– Ashley Justice

Ashley Justice: I turned 27 in February of 2020. I feel like I was robbed of my late twenties where I was feeling finely grounded and then the world said, “Ha ha ha!”

Megan Gill: “JK , LOL.” We are reclaiming those years.

Ashley Justice: Yeah. Oh, but speaking of that, I feel like that was such an interesting time mentally. I mean, I probably told you that I had a really severe ED pretty much my whole life. But that was such an interesting time where I knew it was flaring up, or that the thoughts or the anxiety around it was flaring up, because as soon as I stopped being active in my New York life, I was like, “Oh my God, I’m not gonna be able to do anything. Everything’s gonna change, da, da, da.” And I was like, “Okay.” I remember having to tell myself, “You’re going to gain weight and it’s fine.”

That did happen, but I remember having to coach myself through it because, “There’s just no way you can be as physically active as you were.” I didn’t have access to a real gym, so I couldn’t really lift weights or anything. And I also didn’t want to go into hyper –

Megan Gill: – force yourself to do something that you genuinely don’t want to do.

Ashley Justice: And I remember that was a really big moment because I was like, “Oh shit.

Like I really have to sit with this.”

Megan Gill: And do the hard – to me, like the easy out would be that we’re gonna just fall back into old patterns, we’re gonna just do what we’ve always known instead of approaching the challenging path of – wow, how aware of you to be able to be holding your own hand like, “It’s gonna be okay.”

Ashley Justice: Yeah, because I was like, I could hyper control everything I eat and really restrict because that would make the most sense to go from being really active and not having to think about it as much to only thinking about what I’m consuming, but that’s the big issue that I had anyway, right? So I was like, “Oh crap.”

And I wasn’t in a healthy enough space to be like, “Well, some of that’s valid.” If you’re removed from ED brain, a normal thing to do would be to modify your intake with what you’re doing in a day.

Megan Gill: Yeah, from a “fitness” perspective, “nutrition” perspective.

Ashley Justice: Yeah, your activity decreases, so your intake of calories should decrease. But it was such a stark change. It literally went from a full life –

Megan Gill: Like night and day, and not to mention the state of the world, which then, at least for me in my experience, put my mental health at like an – it really tested me mentally.

Ashley Justice: Same.

Megan Gill: And with anxiety and everything.

Ashley Justice: And a big thing that triggers my ED is control, right? And the state of the world, we couldn’t control it. So the pattern, or the “easy” thing for me to do would’ve been to go right back into that. That’s how I felt in control, just everything I eat, make sure that – and I was like, “I’m releasing that because I genuinely can’t control any of this,” and the idea of trying to manage this in this time of uncertainty was like so much. So I had to release it, and it’s been a thing because my body really did change from that point.

So that’s something that I’m still managing being like, “Okay, it was a big change that happened over those couple years.” That was a challenge for sure.

Because you go from, I had just turned 27, I had just moved to New York. I was in the depths of having all these dreams and really trying to navigate that. And then it was all kind of ripped, and it was a big challenge for my body image. It was hard.

And then coming back to all of it, post that, I mean, I feel like no one talks about we just started doing capitalism again like it was a normal thing to do.

Megan Gill: Wait, what? Like, “What is all of this again? It’s been a year,” or however long. I don’t know how long – lockdown lasted for quite some time. But I feel like the ease back into like, what is this normalcy – when are gym’s opening? When are we able to go outside again and be back in public?

Ashley Justice: Well, and it was like I was working in a restaurant and doing group fitness. Everything was just – all of my normalcy was ripped away.

Megan Gill: How long, can I ask, were you away from that pre-COVID life? How long would lockdown have lasted for you?

Ashley Justice: I think what happened was March happened, everything shut down. That was the middle of March. I lasted about three weeks in this apartment before I went to New Orleans to go home with my family. I was like, “I can’t be in this apartment anymore.”

And so, I was there until I think maybe May or June. So a few months – March, April, May, June, so a few months. Because then it became summer and we started doing these outdoor classes and things were like a little bit more. And then I think August or so hit and I went back to New Orleans.

Megan Gill: Yeah, which also disrupts any semblance of normalcy that we’re trying to create or like a daily flow.

Ashley Justice: Yeah, routine or something to do. And being able to teach was far and in between. They had kind of reduced us. They had a few people teaching online, like Zoom classes. But I was a brand new instructor. I think I had gotten certified in February of 2020. And so, everything that I was working towards had been very much ripped away from me. And I was just trying to hold onto it a little. I could have easily just been like, “Oh, fuck, whatever,” but I didn’t wanna do that because I had hindsight. I was like, “No, when it reopens, I wanna be able to come back to it. I worked too hard to have it in New York to not do it.”

So I really had tried to dig my feet in, but, you know, it was very tumultuous for a time. My niece’s mom also passed at that point though. And so, it was a weird time. So I remember that being August and me being like, “I think I just have to –,” and like the classes weren’t really – it was turning into fall. Outdoors, the thing that was allowing us to do it was coming to an end. So all of that was kind of just like in the air. So I was like, “I’m just gonna go home until whenever.”

And I think I was home for – I was obviously paying my rent and my stuff was here, but I was laid off from my restaurant. I was laid off from my fitness job, so neither one was operating. And then eventually Landry’s sold our restaurant, so it was like, okay, that’s not reopening.

So I stayed. I stayed until Barre3 was like, “Hey, what’s the –,” I mean, I got my first vaccine in New Orleans. I was there for like a while, which was nice because I was with my family and my sister lives in Houston, so I was going back and forth to Houston some of the times. And yeah, my niece was born in February of 2020. So it was my sister’s first baby, so there was a lot going on that was kind of nice to be home for a little bit. So I just spent a lot of time with my best friend and my family for a while. And that was nice because I wasn’t working.

But while I was teaching, I would sub dance. I was subbing at Barre3 in New Orleans because I was like, “No, I’m gonna keep doing it. You guys can’t tell me that I am not teaching,” so I picked up classes there, and I was teaching in person and on Zoom, so I was like, “You guys can’t tell me that,” because New Orleans was a little different. You had to wear a mask, and I think it was maybe seven people or whatever. So it was in person and they were doing it on Zoom, so people could come in, and they were in person too.

So I was doing that, and I was working the front desk some days. So I was doing some stuff, trying to do the things that I would hopefully do here when I came back. That’s just kind of how I kept myself going because I had gotten certified. Like, “I’m doing this!” And it’s funny now because now I’ve been doing this for a long time, and that’s what I was gonna say earlier when you were like, “Let’s record!”

It’s weird because I worked so hard for this to be a part of my career, right? And it used to be something that I love to do for fun, and now I’m like it’s work. Now it’s just work, and it’s an interesting thing because I’m like, I don’t teach dance, really, because I was getting burnt out with something that I really care about sharing becoming such a monetized thing. I was like, “If I don’t get paid enough, I feel really unappreciated, and that makes me feel bad.” But also just to get a paycheck, that also makes me feel burnt out and feel bad because I’m like if my motivation is just money, then what am I giving? But like, if I’m not getting enough money, I feel bad.

Megan Gill: It’s hard to put your heart into.

Ashley Justice: Yeah, or to constantly have those negotiations and conversations. I think part of it too was I didn’t want to stay in New Orleans and do that. And like I’d never found a place here where I was like, “Oh, I care about these students,” or “I like these people.” It never happened. So that’s always on the back burner for me.

I mean, I love teaching, but I do feel like it’s exhausting navigating that because I’ve had people be like, “Well I don’t think you’re worth that much money,” and I was like, “And I don’t think your kids are worth that much of my time.”

Megan Gill: Amen to that, mic drop right there.

Okay, so she’s not teaching dance, but she is teaching group fitness. Is that the proper term for it, group fitness?

Ashley Justice: Mm-hmm. I teach on the Megaformer, to be specific.

Megan Gill: Okay. Pilates?

Ashley Justice: Well, it’s not Pilates. It’s Lagree.

Megan Gill: Okay. Apologies.

Ashley Justice: Or the Pilates girl will come for us. It’s on the Megaformer.

Megan Gill: Okay, got you. I, myself, have only taken one Pilates class in my whole life and never a Lagree class.

Ashley Justice: So there’s mat Pilates, and then there’s like reformer Pilates. So reformer Pilates are on the machine. A reformer is like a little bit more – it’s like a carriage connected to springs and there’s a platform and then there are other things that you can put on it. And Pilates is meant to be low impact. You know, it’s about using your breath and using you know, smooth flow, right, which I love. We love that.

Megan Gill: And also talk about not having any injuries, right? The strength and like the low impact compared to…

Ashley Justice: Yes, so everything is with resistance, but not pressure on your joints, basically. Everything is meant to be smooth, and you’re really trying to engage the muscles to allow the movement to happen. And then you add on the tension to do that.

With a Megaformer and the Lagree method, is a strength-based workout that is low impact but high intensity. The machines are, I would say, a bigger version of a reformer and I mean bigger. They’re wider and they’re longer. And the resistance is heavy. There are different springs, and it’s a lot of resistance. It’s meant to be similar in the sense that you transition really quickly, but it’s mostly strength based. So it’s still low impact, meaning you’re on a machine, you’re doing time under tension, but you’re meant to be moving quickly and getting your heart rate up and really working your strengths. If you go to Club Pilates, that’s based in Pilates, and if you go to Solidcore, that is based in Lagree method.

So those are the differences. I teach at SLT. Which is Lagree method.

Megan Gill: Do you only teach at SLT?

Ashley Justice: Yeah. I mean, I am technically on payroll for this corporate company called Exos that has contracts with – you know, like I taught at Pfizer. I would teach barre. And I used to work at Equinox. I used to be a trainer at Equinox, but I hated that. But right now I’m just with SLT. So I’ve done barre, personal training, Lagree, and dance.

Megan Gill: She knows the body.

Ashley Justice: I think so, yeah.

Megan Gill: No, you definitely do.

—

Megan Gill: How is this transition as a dancer and someone who’s been moving your body in some way, in these ways for a good portion of your life, and then now coming into the group fitness space, how have these ebbs and flows of taking a lot of classes and then now how you’re not taking a lot of classes, how have you navigated that and kind of coped with that?

Ashley Justice: I think it’s hard because I feel like also I’m getting older. And so, that’s also playing a role in what feels good and what doesn’t. And also a hard thing is, I mean, we were talking about that earlier, you go, go, go and you don’t even realize that it’s not healthy because your body, for some reason, can handle it at some point. And then you get to a point where it can’t anymore. And now that I’m older, I’ve learned my lesson. I can only do so much, and I can’t stack things and just go, go, go. I’ll physically have a breakdown, like emotionally, mentally, physically, and it’s just gonna put me back even more. So it’s kind of this constant circle of trying to find what feels sustainable enough.

But yeah, I think the hard thing for me as a dancer is there is this constant thing of, “Oh, you’re never doing enough,” and I think that goes back to like what we were talking about before, in college, all that pressure, where it was like we were moving all day and they were like, “And you are not small enough, and you need to be doing more cardio.” But what I needed to be doing was lifting weights. But that’s a different thing. This makes me so mad because I got tendonitis because of that shit.

Megan Gill: Because of the overdoing of the cardio and not strengthening your muscles.

Ashley Justice: Yeah, I’m like, you guys want all this endurance, but I’m eating, like, zucchini and quinoa and an apple and then running for an hour on the elliptical after I’ve danced for five hours. It doesn’t really –

Megan Gill: Make it make sense! The math is literally not mathing!

Ashley Justice: I was scared too. I didn’t know what to do with weights. I needed a personal trainer that was gonna be like, “Lift that! Lift that!” I wish I had that because it would’ve made all the difference to not put so much pressure on being smaller, but put pressure on – and just the acknowledgement of how much we were working. It was because they were like, “That’s the expectation.” And that’s fair. Sure, that’s the expectation. But on top of that, we were constantly being told, “Outside of this, you’re not doing the right things. You’re not eating right. You’re not moving right.” I got told like my legs were too big because I was activating the wrong muscles and it was making them bulky, and my legs just look like that. They were never gonna be small.

Megan Gill: You’re like, “These are my fucking legs!”

Ashley Justice: It’s so funny because I said something the other day and Rita was like, “Your legs are literally insane!” She just said that, and I was like, “That’s so funny.” I don’t even know if she remembers, but she was just saying like, “Your legs are literally bonkers, like insane muscle. It’s crazy. It’s always been crazy,” and I’m like, “Yeah, remember when I was bullied about this?” She’s like, “But like they’re so crazy. Your legs are insane,” and I was like, “Thanks!”

But it’s funny because it was the first feedback – it was my first semester, it was the first feedback I got.

Megan Gill: About your legs?

Ashley Justice: Yeah.

Megan Gill: Being quote unquote too big.

Ashley Justice: Yeah. Okay, also, they were the wrong shape.

Megan Gill: Oh my God. It’s so wild to me that the emphasis is on, like you said, being smaller and the emphasis is not on general strength. And then also to go along with that, emphasis was on being smaller and being thin and looking this picture perfect way that they had envisioned for us to look. When in reality, where is the overall general emphasis on health? The fact that we were not eating enough is also insane.

Ashley Justice: I don’t know if I ever told you this, but there was a point where I couldn’t keep my arm up in ballet because my body was convulsing because I was shaking so badly because my blood sugar was so low, and I got called lazy by one person that I don’t feel like talking about, someone that I don’t even know if you even remember this person. So it’s no one that in your head that you’ve thought of that came up. It’s none of them actually.

And another person was like, “You’re gonna call the doctor, and you’re gonna sit in my office until you call,” and it was crazy because I didn’t understand what was going on. I didn’t even know why I was shaking.

Megan Gill: That’s how normalized all of this –

Ashley Justice: It was like, “I don’t know why I can’t hold my arm up. I don’t know why my body is shaking and why I feel like I can’t get through barre.”

Megan Gill: Was it like, “I’m doing everything you’re telling me –,” this is very broad and generalized. “I’m doing everything that you’re telling me that I’m being told to do”? You just thought that you were doing what you were supposed to be doing kind of a thing?

Ashley Justice: Yeah, and even on top of that was still getting the messaging like, “You’re not strong enough. Your core is not strong enough. You need to do Pilates.” But I was like, “How the hell am I supposed to do Pilates? I can’t afford Pilates because I had this scholarship that said I needed to work, but I couldn’t work on campus. So I had to work off campus.” But I also was a scholarship student. So then they were like, “Well, you have to be available for every rehearsal we want you to be available for.” So I was like, “Well, how am I supposed to do all of that? Because I can’t work enough to pay for anything, but I have to work.” That’s why I worked at Bella Luna once a week. I worked on Sundays. They just let me come in on Sundays because I was like, “I have no other time to come in.” So I’d just come and work a brunch on a Sunday so that I had a job, right, so that my scholarship wouldn’t get taken away. But I also had no other time, and there were no resources for me to pay for Pilates, and there was very little time for me to – because, hello, I also had academic classes.

Megan Gill: Yeah, not to mention!

Ashley Justice: Not to mention, I also had academic classes, so going home, I was usually doing them online. So I did a lot of online classes, and there were some semesters where I had rehearsal all the time and some semesters where I probably could have fit that in, right? But I didn’t even know where to access it because I’m not fucking from this city and I don’t know anyone here, and you’re the only people I fucking know. That was the other thing, too, about my experience was like, “I don’t have a community here.” And I felt like nobody understood that. I’m like, “You guys are the only community I have, so every bit of my experience is consumed by this.”

Megan Gill: I can very much relate with that.

Ashley Justice: Like, “This is all I’ve got.”

Megan Gill: And it becomes like your, like community is almost synonymous with family in a sense that there is a lot of trust here, and it’s like, there’s someone who very much took me under their wing and was like, “This is gonna be great,” and there’s a lot of trust built there when it’s like, “Oh, someone sees something in me,” and it’s like, “Okay, this is great, and I trust them!” And then like the messaging you’re getting from them, in various ways, indirectly through things that were said to my close friends that then were passed on to me, things that were done to me, and then it’s just like the general messaging within said program.

Ashley Justice: I had a very, very similar experience because I was also taken under the wing. I had a very, very similar experience, and the person that inflicted so much of that shit on me was also the person who got me my eating disorder specialist therapist, was the person who found it for me. Wild, right? You’re actively perpetuating this on me and also recognizing that I’m not okay.

—

Ashley Justice: I mean, it’s a little bit of hindsight, a little bit of survival too. I just couldn’t stand it anymore. I was past the breaking point. It was really, really bad. And it wasn’t just me. I think a lot of people were at a breaking point and they were just like me, “Eh, we’re getting what we want, so that’s good.” And yeah, I think I got to a point where I was like, “Oh, I mean, if I’m not gonna be dancing, I can say what I want.

And yeah, I’ve gotten apologies from – for some reason I elicit people apologizing to me when I’m like, “Oh, okay.”

Megan Gill: You’re like, “Oh, thank you.”

Ashley Justice: And I mean, I remember Donnie and I were so close at the time. He lost a bunch of weight and got pulled aside and they were like, “Are you okay?” I mean, correct. Good to check in. Did I ever get that? No. They were so deeply hard on me and they would always be like, “Well, it’s just because we think you’re so capable and blah, blah, blah,” and I was like, “But you’re putting this pressure and you’ve instilled in my head that my capability doesn’t matter, right?

Megan Gill: Because it’s about my body and not about my capability?

Ashley Justice: Yeah, and I remember one time being like, “You keep saying that I’m so good and I’m such a good dancer, but my body’s the problem, but my body’s the one dancing. So if I’m so good, then how is my body the problem? If I’m so much better the –,” and better is a big word to use. But if I’m so “good” or in this prime of me dancing, but my body’s the issue, you just don’t like seeing my body being capable of doing it. Or it defies what you think my body looks like, should be capable of doing it, because I can do it at a level that you’re trying to make me smaller and put me down because you’re like, “Well that’s not how it’s supposed to go.” And instead of that, they tried to, I think their perspective was, “If she can just get her body right, she’s gonna be able to book.” That’s what I think, true to god, the motivation was yes. “If you can just do that, you can book,” and I couldn’t do it because I was already fucked up mentally and it was putting pressure on me that was not sustainable, right? And maybe that’s true, right? Maybe that is true, and maybe they were right, or maybe not.

But the reality is, like what we said before, it wasn’t their position. Their position should have just been, “All right, see this. Let’s foster it.” And they just focus so deeply on me. And what are the implications of you telling me that my body’s not where it – the implications of me in that moment are, like you said, “You’re someone that I trust, you’re in a position of power, so I believe what you have to say because you know more than me.” That’s implication one. Implication two: what they know about me is that I left everything I knew and I’m in a place where I don’t have anyone, and you’re my only support system. So everything you say is the only thing I have, right?

So you know that, and you’re telling me that I’m not doing enough outside of this department. So now in my head, I’m not doing enough, I’m not working hard enough, I need to do more. These are all the implications of telling people things like that in those positions, right? Because you’re talking about a position of power and you’re talking about students and professors, and in these performance programs, like we said, those lines get very blurred. They really do, and I think that can happen in general. But I think with performance-based programs, it’s way more prevalent, because in other programs, there’s a little bit of a structure and separation that there’s not always in these scenarios.

Megan Gill: Right, and we’re also like feelers and artists and creatives, so I feel like we like family up, kind of. We get really close with our people.

Ashley Justice: Yeah, you’ll cut yourself open just for the validation of doing it. But yeah, the implications of what they’re saying, I just don’t think that they were really understanding that, or maybe they did and they didn’t care, or they were just like, “That’s too much for me to handle, so I can only look at it through this lens.” But the implications of telling a student all of that is very personal, right? At least from my perspective, you’re telling me that your perspective of me is that I do not do enough to be adequate, right?

Megan Gill: Or that I will, then, graduate this program, and from everything you’re telling me and projecting onto me, I will not be bookable, and I will not get work –

Ashley Justice: I mean, I straight up was told that.

Megan Gill: – because of my body, which is extremely fucked, literally so extremely fucked, right? So what about a world where the leaders in this dance program see you and they’re like, “Yep, we’re gonna put her in this, we’re gonna book her in this” We are never going to even have the fucking body conversation because it doesn’t fucking matter. Like what? I know it’s a little Pollyanna, but it’s like –

Ashley Justice: I mean, the costumes are a whole different conversation that I was also dealing with. I don’t even wanna talk about it. Giving me a six-foot-five man’s costume was maniacal, and then Renee was like, “Hey girl, your costume looks crazy from the audience.” I was like, “Yeah, it’s giant.” So she had to go in and sew it on the sides to make it – it’s a biketard, by the way, so it should have been fitted. We were borrowing them from OCU, and I was just too big to fit into the other one, so they gave it to Casey or something. I mean, to be fair, Casey’s really skinny and needed a smaller one than me.

Megan Gill: It’s called go fucking find another solution and not make it about you being the problem. The problem is not you, the problem is that –

Ashley Justice: Well, luckily, Renee was like, “Why the fuck does Ashley’s costume look like that?”

Megan Gill: Thank god! But also to have to go through that experience and to have these people that you know and love and trust be so – and not to blame them but, you know?

Ashley Justice: Then by the senior year, Cheyla’s texting me, “Hey, we’re ordering costumes. What size are you most comfortable with?”

Megan Gill: This should be the fucking baseline.

Ashley Justice: But only because I crashed out on them!

Megan Gill: But this is where the power – and it sucks because it’s like I’m sitting here saying like, “I’m so, so glad, Ashley, that you used your voice and like the power of fucking speaking up and saying, ‘This is not okay.’ But then how much emotional labor for you came along with that, and how unfair is it that you had to step up?” Yay, go you, but also it’s not beside me that that took so much of your time and energy while you were also struggling with your own –

Ashley Justice: Which is why I don’t enjoy taking on the burden of being like a beacon of symbolism for bodies doing things. I hate it. I don’t like it. I don’t like it. I don’t like it, and I don’t want it to be projected onto me. I don’t like it because I’ve already labored enough, I feel like that I’m like, “I don’t wanna do that anymore.” I want it to be neutral. I really resent the, “Oh my god, you got, I love that because –.”

It’s even hard, the shit that I get submitted for is all this like weird curvy shit. But that’s just casting, right? It’s just casting. So that’s fine. It doesn’t burden me in that way, but, I don’t know, I’ve definitely been projected onto where people message me: “Oh my god, I love seeing when you just post your photoshoots, and you’re so confident in your body,” and all this stuff. And I’m like, “Why?”

Megan Gill: Why are we talking about this? Yeah.

Ashley Justice: Nor did I open that conversation. My caption wasn’t like, “Back when I…” No messaging about that. It’s something that gets projected onto me.

Megan Gill: That you did not ask for, kind of like you didn’t ask to be taken – I feel like there’s a theme of people just thinking that they can show up and either look at your body in these ways, or talk about it in these ways, or make it everything in these ways and it’s like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hi, I’m Ashley. I’m a dancer and a choreographer and the fucking awesome person.” Why couldn’t the comment have been like, “You’re gorge!” or “You’re exuding confidence!” Why does it have to tie back to like, “You’re exuding confidence because I’m so inspired by you sharing your body in this way.” Why do we have to talk about that, least of it all, why is that what everything comes back to?

Ashley Justice: Yeah, and it’s hard because with social media and with all of these things, it’s taken me a long time to be able to even live in that because for so long, I was just like I just don’t wanna be commented on, I don’t wanna be perceived. That was kind of the fallout of graduating. I was like, “I don’t even want to be looked at or talked about or talked to.” If someone brought anything up, I literally would shut down and be like, “Oh, I’m not talking about that.” Like, “Oh no, I’m not doing that.” Literally, I was just like, I simply can’t even be in these situations.

And that’s why, at the time, I was teaching dance a lot and I was like, “Ooh, this environment is not the environment for me right now because I feel so strongly about it and I’m still dealing with my own stuff. And it’s not the time for me to be in charge because I’m either going to get mad at people, or I’m gonna have conflict a lot. I still have to navigate everything about me before I become this advocate of body positivity in dance. I couldn’t handle that at that moment in time, but I also couldn’t stand back and watch kids be subjected to the things that I know caused me so much harm. So I really had to remove myself from that because I was like, “I can’t do it. I’m having a hard time,” because I just came from this place, right, where I was already fighting. I was literally already in fight mode, and I’m like, “I’m not in the place to have this fight with people.” Because people are like, “Why do you feel so – where is this coming from?” There’s no context for where it’s coming from or you know, any of that. So I was like, okay, this isn’t a space that’s gonna be good for me at this point in time. I can’t be there.

Now it’s fine. I’m good. Back then, ten years ago when I was in that position, I was like, “No way.” And at the time I was dancing too, and people were just so interested in what I was doing and, “Oh, how you look –,” and all this stuff. It’s a lot to try to do and to be projected on and then to also try to be auditioning and then deal with that outside of it? I’m like, I just need anything that isn’t consumed by that.

Megan Gill: Mm-hmm, which I think is so hard because it’s like, gosh, for your passion to be dance, this thing where, like you said earlier, my body’s doing the dancing – our bodies are so synonymous with the art form that it just, it makes it so, so nuanced. And it’s like, god, there is no separating that and it is really fucking hard to navigate. So then if I need to take care of myself and maybe not be spoken about in these ways and like not fully be on display, well then does that also mean that I’m not dancing? What does that mean?

Ashley Justice: And on top of all of that, what’s very interesting for me – and I think women experience this, I think anyone who identifies as a woman experiences this in some capacity, in whatever way they fit into the way society views them, objectively, as a woman, which is gross and I hate, but also a reality. An interesting time to get into my twenties and really develop the body type that I have and an interesting time for BBLs to be a thing and for the Kardashians and all of this stuff. So it’s a weird juxtaposition to be a single woman who’s a dancer. Very confusing, right?

It’s always been hard to be a white woman with the body type that I have because my sister also has a similar body type, and we’re from a place where it’s also very Black. So these things are not dynamics that we’re not used to, but you remove yourself out of my little New Orleans bubble and you put me other places – so, mind you, my personal life, my inner workings, my trauma, my stuff, all this dance stuff, right, that’s such a big, huge part of who I am. Then I go and I do things, and I’ve always like, “I need an identity out(side) of this,” right? So I’m building my life outside of that. And then I date men and guess what’s the forefront for all of these experiences, right? Then you have social media, and guess what’s the forefront of all of these experiences? It doesn’t matter which way I turn, it doesn’t matter who I’m talking to, no matter what, for some reason, the forefront of how people see me is body first, person second, and then I have to navigate conversations from there.

So it’s a hard thing because it’s like what’s more triggering, going and being in dance or literally just living real life? I think women experience that in every way, shape, or form. Women have heard either peers say something about their body, whoever they date say something, maybe, about their body. I teeter because on social media, I almost love to put it out and be like, “Okay, this is just my body and I’m not gonna be uncomfortable with any of this stuff,” and I’ve just decided to be like, “I’m doing this shoot and I don’t care.” It’s fine and I can post it and I’m happy about it or whatever. And it’s interesting to see how people treat me because of that, particularly men. It’s very telling whether right away I’m being objectified, or what they think about what I do, or all this stuff. So it’s a really, really interesting place to be in and how I have to navigate my identity outside of dance too. So I’m constantly teetering that.

And I was telling my good friend, we’ve been friends since high school, and I was telling her that one day and I was like, “Yeah, it’s always this,” and I was talking about somebody saying something to me about my body. Like I said the other day, just casually, someone was like, “Oh yeah, you’ve always had this. Oh yeah, da da da. That must be really hard.” That’s not something I deal with. People don’t talk about my body to my face regularly. And I’m like, I get spoken to about my butt all the time; the fact that I’m white, all the time. It’s such a theme in my life that I’m this blue-eyed, blonde, curvy person that it’s the only lens that I get viewed from, I feel like, on a outward perspective. Now, I don’t feel like that talking to you or I don’t feel like that with like my close friends, but I just mean like in a –

Megan Gill: If you’re out there like going on first dates or meeting people in a while or whatever it may be, yeah.

Ashley Justice: Yeah, and it’s hard because then you talk about fitness in New York, but then I’m in a Pilates space, right? And it’s like the goal is to be white, thin people, and that’s interesting. It doesn’t really bug me because I’m like I just don’t fit into that and I don’t care. But the societal pressure of white supremacy and whiteness on women – or this goal to be thin. That’s what I mean, not the pressures of being white.

Megan Gill: Right.

Ashley Justice: Within white supremacy, within this system that we are –

Megan Gill: Yes, that absolutely goes right along with it.

Ashley Justice: – inside is this need to be thin, right? And that’s the other thing too.

So we talked about body image, and to give context to all this, we’re white, right? We didn’t even talk about the racial aspects and the racism that happens with bodies and how my body and how I’ve been spoken to in a very – I don’t wanna use in a racist way, but I don’t know how else to explain it, that I’ve been told more than once that I have like a Black girl body, right? And that is racist. Not that it’s racist to me, right? It’s racist to Black people –

Megan Gill: Absofuckinglutely.

Ashley Justice: – and to Black women, and also depending on who it’s coming from is an insult, right? And it doesn’t insult me. I don’t feel any insult being compared to Black women at all. But if it’s coming from a white person, I know that that’s an insult, right? It’s a microaggression, and it’s not a microaggression – I mean, I guess it’s a microaggression to me, but it’s a microaggression of putting Black people beneath you and then putting me in that category with Black people that are underneath you.

So that’s a whole other layer that I’ve talked about with friends and like with people. And it’s why with dance, the people that have encouraged me the most are usually people of color. White people in dance are genuinely not my advocates, and I don’t try to have them be my advocates. And I don’t seek out people of color for that. It’s just the people that have become close or given me opportunities or taken the time to ask me what I want, have always been people of color and never white people. White people have projected things. They have done these microaggressions. It does feel easier to be in community with people of color because, while I’ll never know their experience, and while all I can do is be a better voice and not be silent if I see racism happening – it’s always happening, but if blatant things, I see it because it’s been expressed to me in ways that I don’t think it’s expressed to white people who fit the white mold. The microaggressions have happened to me. The implications are less so because I know that it’s happened, I feel like I have the responsibility to call that out. Because what an interesting position to be in, right?

I’ve been told that so many times. Me and my sister have been told that so many times. And it’s not always in a dance context. Sometimes dudes will say that shit. It’s a whole other conversation that I’m happy to talk about if I’m invited into. And it’s just something that I keep front of mind because how I’m spoken to and the way that people interact with me in a social way is also rooted in an race lens, right? Which is a weird thing because I’m white and such a very – my face is giving, like my face is giving Aryan race, and then my body is giving confusion for white people. So it’s been a thing for a long time, and I feel way more in community with people of color in dance spaces, and I’m always grateful to be in those spaces when I’m invited, and I feel more comfortable in those spaces.

And it’s interesting when I was talking to you about that guy I went on a date with who’s a white guy and, you know, when I was talking about that, it’s funny because what I said, my friend, she said the same thing. She’s Filipino and, you know, she’s a person I listen to, and she allows me in those conversations a lot when it comes to race in performing arts and all of these things. And she’s allowed me in on like thoughts and experiences that she’s had and things with her friends that are happening. And she said something exactly what I said to that guy and I was like, “See! White people never understand what I’m fucking saying. White people always get mad and say that I’m negative.” And I’m like, “No, because when I talk to my friends of color, they know exactly what I’m talking about, but it’s because I’m white and you’re perceiving that.” People don’t treat me the same way they treat other white women who fit into that mold. So when I’m critiquing it, you are taking offense, but it needs to be critiqued!

Megan Gill: Right!

Ashley Justice: Right? I was like, “See, I’m valid! I’m not crazy. What I was saying, it makes sense.

Megan Gill: Oh, totally.

Ashley Justice: But it’s another layer that is very complicated and not – you know, I feel like I have to be cautious how I insert those experiences, but I do feel like I live somewhere in between. My agency is an all-Black agency. Of course, none of the big agencies fucking picked me up. Of course, a Black man is my agent. And it’s always Black people in dance who have ever given me an opportunity, always. I can’t even think of a white person that has given me an opportunity besides, you know, my company in New Orleans. But yeah, it’s always people of color who have opened the doors for me.

So that’s why I really listen and I do critique musical theater. I was talking to someone, you know, about doing ECCs for Hell’s Kitchen. I’m like, “If you don’t know who Camille A. Brown is and you’re white, do not go to that. Do not go to that.” I was talking to my friend Veronica because she was complaining about it. I was like, “If I was dancing right now, I would go, but I know Camille’s background. I go to her – I know, and I have the background and I have the training in where her stuff is rooted, and I also would just be happy to just be in the room.

But we were talking about it’s white girls who went to OCU or went to these programs and they’re like, “Oh, and I’m gonna go to everything, and I belong and everything and blah, blah blah.” It’s like, “You don’t belong in this space.”

“  They were so deeply hard on me and they would always be like, ‘Well, it’s just because we think you’re so capable,’ and blah, blah, blah. I remember one time being like, ‘You keep saying that I’m so good and I’m such a good dancer, but if my body’s the problem, my body’s the one dancing. So if I’m so good, then how is my body the problem? If I’m ‘so good’ or in this prime of me dancing, but my body’s the issue, you just don’t like seeing my body being capable of doing it, or it defies what you think that what my body looks like should be capable of doing. Because I can do it at a level that you’re trying to make me smaller and trying to put me down. Because you’re like, ‘Well that’s not how it’s supposed to go.’ But you could just be like, ‘All right,’ period.’ And instead of that, this is what I think their perspective was: ‘If she can just get her body right, she’s gonna be able to book.’ That’s what I think, true to god, the motivation was: ‘If you can just do that, you can book.’”

– Ashley Justice

Ashley Justice is a dancer, choreographer, and fitness instructor, based in New York City. She has a B.F.A. in Dance Performance and Choreography from Wichita State University. She has toured nationally and internationally with Wichita Contemporary Dance Theatre, Lightwire Theater, and was a dancer with Mélange Dance Company. She has worked on multiple film sets in New Orleans as a dancer and is currently represented by 216 Talent Agency. Ashley has premiered her own work in multiple cities across the U.S. including NYC, New Orleans, and Wichita, KS. She was the Assistant Choreographer for the 71st Miss Universe Pageant in 2022 and is currently a full time instructor at SLT, NYC.

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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.

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