Watch the woman who started a dance group for plus-size women
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Charity Holloway always loved dancing but when she was a teenager, she was told she was too fat to dance.
She was left heartbroken but she didn’t give up.
The woman has now started a dance group for plus-size women to prove that plus-size women can also dance.
Charity is the founder and choreographer of 4Thirty-Two in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Charity said that she was one of the heavier kids who loved dancing. She started dancing at a very young age.
She told Barcroft TV: “I first started dancing when I was actually very young. It’s always been a huge passion of mine; I danced in church, I danced in high school, middle school so it’s just been a part of my life ever since I was a young girl.”
“I can remember being in the living room and looking at people like MC Hammer and Janet Jackson and trying to imitate those moves.”
She joined the marching band as a dancer when she was in high school. But when she was in senior year, she was told ‘you have to fit in this uniform if you want to be a dancer’.
She became a flag girl because she couldn’t fit in that uniform.
She then became a cheerleader but it was also a challenge for her.
She said: “I was the bigger girl so I knew it was going to be a challenge. We hadn’t had many plus-sized cheerleaders before in the team so I went in and I just used my mantra: ‘smile, be really loud, be really clean’.”
“The school was gracious enough to actually give me two uniforms and I took those uniforms to a seamstress and she sewed them together and made me an outfit and that’s how I was able to cheer.”
But when she was told she was too fat to dance, it affected her a lot. She decided to be healthy both mentally and physically.
Charity, who now works full time as an account executive in a marketing agency, started her plus-size dance group in 2016.
She said: “One of the main reasons why I started 4Thirty-Two was to dispel those rumours that we are somehow less than because we are plus-sized – that we are not physical or we can’t move or we can’t be sharp or we can’t be beautiful or we can’t be inspirational.”
The group has 18 members, including Charity. They have travelled to Italy and China to perform.
The charity said: “It’s not only just a dance group that I started, but it’s also kind of healer of sort for me.
It’s helped me to become a better person, it’s helped me to look at life differently, its helped me to come out of the dark cloud, the dark hole of depression and feeling less.”
“For me, striving to be a healthier person instead of trying to be a thinner person really gave me a whole new mindset and shift and I started to feel good mentally which is the most important thing.”
“Your weight and your size do not have any kind of implication on your beauty, it doesn’t have to determine how you feel about yourself, it doesn’t have to determine how you live your life.”