Macaulay did write a follow-up column to answer criticism of his comments on Ringer several days later. Noting that one reader had called his review appalling, heartbreaking, childish, hurtful, and incompetent all at once, he wrote: "If you want to make your appearance irrelevant to criticism, do not choose ballet as a career. The body in ballet becomes a subject of the keenest observation and the most intense discussion. I am severe - but ballet, as dancers know, is more so."