Mom
: School tells little girl she's...
Sujet: De la discrimination dès le jeune âge On peut y lire: Mom Krissy Keefer was TUTU angry when a prestigious ballet school barred her daughter's application because, she says, the little girl has the wrong body for a prima bellerina. And that's against the law, says Keefer. The peeved parent has slapped a suit on the San Francisco Ballet School, charging they've discriminated against 8-year-old Fredrika based on her height and weight. Even though the girl is "short and muscular" instead of the regular toothpicky type, Keefer thinks there's no reason her offspring can't train for a shot in the big time. "My daughter is exceptionally talented," fumes Keefer, who runs two dance troupes in the city. "Anyone who sees her perform is impressed by her talent." At first, Keefer says, bigwigs at the 325-student hoofing institute wouldn't even let Fredrika show them her stuff. "They told me she did not have the right body to be accepted into the regular program, and they wouldn't even look at her in the audition," Keefer steams in the complaint she filed with the city's Human Rights Commission. Eventually, the dance folks gave the fourth-grader a look-see, but turned her down anyway. A total of 1,413 students applied to the school last year, and only 403 were accepted. "This is school that trains professional dancers," says spokeswoman Diane Kounalakis. "We are not a recreation program." The official Web site says: "The ideal candidate is healthy child with a well-proportioned body, a straight and supple spine, legs turned out from the hip joint, flexibility, slender legs and torso and correctly arched feet, who has an ear for music and an instinct for movement." But Keefer says kids with different body types, likes her Fredrika, can dance just as well, and she's out to change the people's perception of what a ballerina should look like. And civil rights activists are behind her all the way. "It's a really groundbreaking case," says attorney Eva Patterson, who helped overturn the San Francisco Fire Department's minimum height requirements. "I'm sure many people will pooh-pooh it, but it sounds important because it could force us to re-examine our attitudes toward body images and culture." If Keefer wins, the school could face fines and also the $550,000 a year it gets from the city's Grants for the Arts program. Other supporters of the suit include groups working to fight eating disorders. "It's been known for a long time that ballerinas are at a high risk for many problems," says Pam Guthrie of the American Anorexia Bulimia Association. "It's just impossible for some people who love to dance to have the type of sought-after body type. It's a shame, especially for small girls who long to be ballerinas." Fredrika's mother Krissy Keefer is determined to change people's perception of what a ballerina should look like.
L'histoire
sur ABCnews.com Mon commentaire Ce cas nous démontre une fois de plus qu'il existe belle et bien une discrimination morphologique envers les femmes dans le milieu artistique. Et cela semble commencer dès le jeune âge, chez les fillettes. Donc, cela signifie que la société inculte l'obsession de la minceur chez les filles dès l'âge de 6 ans. Les jeunes filles grandissent avec l'idée qu'il est préférable d'être mince. Cela a comme conséquence grave d'engendrer des cas d'anorexie chez les filles de 12, 13 et 14 ans. Nous pouvons aussi comprendre le fait que, sans tomber dans l'anorexie, une majorité d'adolescentes ont une obsession de la minceur, ont déjà suivi une diète et sont insatisfaites de leur apparence physique. Je vais me répéter : Le seul moyen de régler ce problème, c'est de valoriser la beauté de la rondeur féminine. Devenez copropriétaire. Pour terminer, je fais appel à vous : si vous avez rencontré ce genre de cas de discrimination morphologique envers des enfants, faites-le-moi savoir sur mon courriel Commentaire fait par José Breton
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