Why Ballerinas Hate Kendall Jenner’s Vogue España Video

Vogue España managed to stir up quite an impressive tempest in a vanishingly small teapot when they featured a video of Kendall Jenner, world-famous model, sashaying around a ballet studio while describing how she didn't have a childhood. “I had to grow up pretty fast, I love being a kid — to run around like a child just not caring,” Jenner says in the video. “I’ve always been adventurous, so I love doing stuff like that — I don’t know, just stupid stuff. I love walking around; being able to be free.” Here's the video, so you can see exactly how angry you personally would like to feel before we explain why ballerinas are angry.

Dance Spirit magazine published a blog post decrying the magazine video. "Because they decided to dress Jenner up in tutus and legwarmers and have her 'do ballet,' though she’s clearly not ballet trained," the post reads. "In the voiceover, she talks about 'loving being a kid' and missing childhood; the video is, apparently, a sort of little-girl fantasy on ballerina-ness. Which, OK. But to our eyes, the whole thing reads as pretty disrespectful to the artists who devote their lives to this demanding craft." The post correctly understands the message of the video. The video is designed to convey exactly a "little-girl fantasy on ballerina-ness," because Jenner devoted her childhood towards becoming a world famous model. She also decided to devote her life to a craft that places extreme demands on youth, physique, and je ne sais quoi. Much like a ballerina, who must adhere to a strenuous training regimen for even the barest of chances at achieving professional success, Jenner presumably has sacrificed more than a little to rise to the top of her field. If you don't believe us, hear it from the lips of other successful models about their time at Fashion Week. So, yes, Jenner is not ballet trained. But having a model talk about being a model is only interesting the first 1,000 times she's in a magazine. Having a person who's been famous more or less her entire adolescence and adult life talk about how she tries to recreate her childhood at least runs the risk of being interesting. The Cut points out that the Vogue family has traditionally been excellent at depicting actual ballet performers. "And Vogue has historically been pretty good about hiring actual dancers for shoots; the magazine has featured ABT’s Misty Copeland, as well as male dancers such as Rudolf Nureyev and David Hallberg, and Teen Vogue devoted an entire video series to dancers at Miami City Ballet School." However, people on Twitter are not pleased with how Jenner disrespected their craft.