TTC 'We Move You' Ballet Ad and Body Image

There's a TTC (Toronto Transit Commission, buses and subways) advertisement campaign featuring ballerinas from The National Ballet of Canada. The TTC 'We Move You' is sort of a pun; they move us around the city, like how ballerinas move us in the arts.

Body Confidence Canada says the ad is promoting an unhealthy body image. They think that the ballerinas in the ads are all stereotypically thin, and they feel it's unrealistic for people to have that kind of body. Most people who use the TTC don't have that kind of body. The irony is that an organization based on 'body confidence' is 'body shaming.'

Here is my argument. How about all the photoshopped magazines? They clearly have unrealistic body proportions. Limbs are contorted, waists shrink, breasts and bottoms grow like balloons, fat gets smoothed down to bare bone, and faces even change! Why not call every magazine company and complain to them about being unrealistic?

But Body Confidence Canada targets ballerinas, people who train and work hard for years, and have real, unphotoshopped body structures. They even filmed them dancing, which means there is no photoshop. It's from years of sweat and practice.

Body Confidence Canada should accept all body types for what they are, but they don't. If you look confident already in your own body like ballerinas do, you are not going to be applauded for it, but instead you're going to be told you look like an unhealthy stereotype.

Newsflash! Even ballerinas have body issues they suffer from. Everyone does. Most ballerinas have pain in their feet, since they have to balance on the very tips of their toes. They are put in front of a mirror, see every tiny flaw in their bodies, but they work hard and practice to be better.

Most people don't have the body type of ballerinas, because most people are not ballerinas, and at some point in their life, they have accepted that and moved on with their lives.

The TTC does not discriminate against anyone taking it. If you're thin or overweight, in a wheelchair, tall or short, a person of colour, have a bike, tourette's syndrome, pregnant, have a broken arm, blind, deaf, young or old, etc., they will still let you on! Even hobos are let on if they have the change. The only times I've seen people kicked off was when they were yelling and arguing, and putting all the other passenger's safety at risk.

I really disappointed in Body Confidence Canada for their judgememtal and discriminating behaviour. If you really wanted to see a variety of body types in advertisements, then launch your own ad campaign, and challenge how people think. People make their own videos all the time. Make it so that people can see what you mean. Put plus-sized ballerinas in there, and anyone else you'd like to include to promote body diversity. That would be a respectable challenge to the TTC. But instead you have generated body shaming and ridicule, things that your organization must be really proud of.