Alexa PenaVega’s elimination from Monday’s episode of Dancing with the Stars will leave a lasting impression on fans and further solidifies why she thinks DWTS is a different type of competition show.
PenaVega got the boot after an emotionally charged performance set to “Make It Rain.” The dance, which was choreographed by her partner Mark Ballas, was supposed to tell the story of PenaVega’s six-year struggle with an eating disorder.
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During the pre-performance clip, PenaVega, who starred in Spy Kids, revealed to Ballas that when she was younger, producers would tell her, “You’re too fat.”
“I struggled with bulimia for so long, and even though I got through it, I feel like a lot of my insecurities from my body are from that,” she explained. She said that when she and her husband, Carlos, joined the show, they wanted to stand for something positive in the face of all the negativity she had always come up against in Hollywood.
She said, “It’s so crazy because when Carlos and I joined the show, like one, it was a journey together. But more than anything we just kept saying, if we could just be a light for people, shine a light on marriage, shine a light on life… I feel like there [are] so many things out there that are so negative. This is the one show where you can show something so positive and have fun and show a journey. If we could do that, that was our main goal, and I really felt like we did that, especially tonight.”
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Ballas said creating the dance, in which he was supposed to represent PenaVega’s disease, was “incredible… I think with issues like that, people usually don’t like to address them. With issues like that, you have to be bold, you have to have courage and you have to put it out there… as long as we can help one person, that’s all that matters. Tonight’s dance was bigger than the show. It was about a bigger message… to help people and to inspire.”
It takes a lot of courage to publicly address something like this. Kudos to PenaVega for wanting to change the narrative and be a positive body role model.
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