Parenting & Family Quote by Twyla Tharp

Perfection, in Tharp's world, is never just an aesthetic standard; it's a lifestyle tax that comes due early. Her phrasing circles the brutal trade-off built into elite performance: the "necessity" to be excellent isn't framed as ambition or joy, but as compulsion. "Constantly" is the pressure point. It suggests a system where one great night buys you nothing but the right to be judged again tomorrow, and where identity collapses into output.

The line "absolutely wedded" does quiet violence. Marriage is supposed to be chosen, mutual, sustaining; Tharp uses it to describe a binding contract with an "ideal" that doesn't love you back. Dedication becomes a spouse with veto power over childhood, spontaneity, and even ordinary failure. That metaphor also signals how discipline can masquerade as virtue: people applaud the vows without asking who drafted them, or what the ceremony cost.

Then she lands the hardest truth with casual certainty: "as a child you're going to pay for it personally". Not "you might", not "it can be hard", but a guarantee of private consequences. The subtext is that the costs aren't abstract (missed parties, strict diets) but intimate: warped self-worth, anxiety mistaken for drive, a body treated like a project. Coming from a dancer-choreographer who built a reputation on rigor and repeatable excellence, it reads less like complaint than ledger entry - a candid acknowledgment that greatness is often purchased with the very years when you're least equipped to consent.