Ballerina

I'm grateful for the gift, don't get me wrong! But I do wish Deirdre Kelly's Ballerina wasn't filled with so many unprovable assertions and straw men. She claims, for example, Balanchine's oft-repeated "Don't think, dear, do" as an example of how the women in the company were expected to leave their brains at the door, with no mention that the men in the company also got that advice. She claims that women in the company who had sex with anyone but him were punished, and quotes Gelsey Kirkland and Toni Bentley at some length, but doesn't even mention Allegra Kent or Merrill Ashley, who had more positive and creative experiences with Balanchine (and who also have readily available memoirs).
Kelly goes on at length to lay much of the blame for ballerinas' eating disorders at Balanchine's feet. It's true that he liked thinner dancers; I'm not saying he is blameless here. But it's also true that female athletes in every sport have gotten thinner (on average) over the last 125 years: they jump higher, run faster, and throw harder.
And I'm quoting a bit out of context here (though I didn't agree with most of the paragraph this comes from), but this sentence (p. 6) still just kills me:
"But ballet at the French court was also the means by which Louis maintained control over his courtiers."