I was browsing Facebook earlier today and saw a post advertising a local ballet class. In the comment section was a ballet teacher criticizing the technique of one of the dancers in the photo. She said that because of the poor technique she could not bring herself to “like” the post, even though it was for her own studio.

At first I chuckled and then it hit me…I didn’t notice anything at all wrong with the photo whatsoever. I’m sure I post imperfect technique photos of my kid ALL THE DAMN TIME.

I then started questioning myself, as I am friends online with many of our studios instructors. Are they silently (or not so silently) criticizing the dance photos I post of my daughter?  Eek. But then something else hit me….I’m sure they are. And so are others, probably. And I don’t care.

Normally for my posts, I choose beautiful stock photos of other dancers to keep my content clean and sleek. For this particular piece, the imperfect photos you see are of my imperfect dancer. And I love them.

I am not a dance teacher. I’m a dance parent. I don’t know exactly where her hip, knee, foot is supposed to be, or where it isn’t. I do know that I love her smile. I love her effort, her passion and her fire. She’s a dancer. Period. Even if she isn’t the perfect dancer, that doesn’t make her any less of a dancer, nor does it mean I should refrain from doing the “mom” thing. When I brag on my kid its because I love her exactly how she is, regardless of how her foot is turned.

It reminded me of a photo I saw posted by another mom of a very talented little dancer a while back. It was professionally done to make it look like the girl was dancing in a magical fantasy land and looked like it belonged on the cover of a magazine somewhere. But she captioned it by stating that her dancer hated the photo of herself and did not want it displayed because of her sickled foot and bent leg. The dancer was 5 years old. Now I don’t know if the little girl was actually that self aware and self conscious at 5, or if mom was just fishing for compliments, but I still didn’t understand why this exquisite photo needed to be paired along side a negative description.

It was gorgeous.

If you’re an instructor who tends to criticize photos you see of dancers online, please know that I mean no disrespect or judgement, I’m sure it probably comes naturally to you because correcting technique is literally what you do for a living, I get it.

I am also not saying technique is not important, we all know it is. To be honest I have had photos that I did not post because the technique was obviously cringe worthy. I mean, if even I can see it, its bad. But do I over-analyze every photo we take to ensure its nothing but perfect technique before sharing it with family and friends? Do I care if when others see the photo, they opt to criticize and think negatively instead of admiring it at the face value of it being a cute picture of a cute kid enjoying their passion? Absolutely not. She’s a kid, so if someone wants to go there, that’s on them. My daughters technique is FAR from perfect, we’d have no dance photos if I was worried about that.

I think its very easy, especially in the competitive dance world, to forget that these are kids. Are they super talented little dancing beasts? Heck yes but they are not always going to be perfect. Post the picture anyways. We don’t have to live this social media life as dance moms where we pretend our kids don’t have flaws. If the kid loves to dance and shes glowing and her eyes sparkle but her knees are bent and crooked…Please post the photo anyways.

Perfection is so overrated. Perfection is boring. Perfection is not real life. Post those imperfect photos Mama. I’ll be posting mine too.

And if you’d like to follow my dancers imperfect dance photos on Instagram, feel free to do so @brokedancemom