THAT Free People Ballet Ad

Here's the thing about the Free People ballet ad that everyone's so upset and/or snarky about: I don't blame the dancer, who seems like a sweet, genuinely passionate woman, and I am sad that she will probably be very hurt by this online outburst of rage/snarkiness.

That said, it is so disrespectful of the company to cast a dancer who is not trained to do what they wanted her to do: represent a professional ballerina look/technique. If they were going for cute, quirky, boho dancing, then it would have been fine. But they weren't. They put her in pointe shoes (which by the looks of things was dangerous) and framed this as a narrative of a professional ballerina. This is disrespectful to the community of people they claim to be representing, and it is unfair to the dancer they are subjecting to mockery and harshness.

Let's be kind to one of our own - a woman who loves dancing - and make sure we hold accountable the company, not the dancer.