Next thing I want to talk about is I have been touring colleges this week (Go Commodores and Bulldogs!) so I have yet to have the chance to gather pictures or truly begin working on my layout, so what I decided to do was make a rough draft of my two page spread article. I decided to go with the Too Risqué? article about if dance is affecting the development and growth of young girls particularity in the 10-14 year old age range. This article I feel like is original, and informative, and really has an impact on dancers and their parents. I took pictures of the article, but if the pictures are unclear I will reproduce the article above it. This is my first draft, the article has gone through minimal editing and will probably be shortened prior to the final copy.
Too
Risqué?
Is the
oversexualizing of young girls in dance affecting their development?
By: Taylor
Barton
What do the songs “My Humps”, “Lady Marmalade”, “Hey Big
Spender” have in common? They are all popular recital dance recital songs and
not just for teenagers. Girls (and boys) anywhere from the ages of 8 to 18 are
dancing to songs like this every year in dance recitals across the country. Now
these are all very sexual songs to begin with, then if you add in tight,
revealing costumes, as well as more and more inappropriate dance moves (like
the world famous “twerk”) and you get oversexualized, provocative tween girls
(for the most part).
Dance has been a part of society and culture since the
earliest times, used for rituals, celebrations, and ceremonies, it has now
shifted into a recreational hobby appealing to many far and wide. Children get
into dance as early as the age of two, and some continue to not only major in
dance at college, but pursue careers in the dance industry. As the dancers
develop in age, physically, and in maturity they can handle dances with more
serious, hard, even sexual subject matters. More intense subject matters are
becoming more and more popular among choreographers, and not just for teens and
twenty-something year old, but kids and tweens are faced with dances well
beyond their age at an alarming rate.
The argument could be made that the increase in overly mature
content stemmed from the hit television reality show Dance Moms, in which head choreography and owner of the Abby Lee
Dance Company, Abby Lee Miller, has been known to choreograph intense dances
for young girls, that may be as young as 7 and continue onto the age of 13/14
(the studio has older girls, but the show focuses on girls of these ages). Some
of Miller’s more inappropriate dances
include the young girls being featured as topless Vegas showgirls (an
episode that caused so much public outrage, that Lifetime had to pull the episode from air shortly after initial air
date). Other oversexualized dances include “Electricity” (Season 1 Episode 2), or
“Snapshot” (Season 1 Episode 8) in which the pre-teen group all came out in
bikinis and swimsuits.
Regardless of whether or not the increase of inappropriate
dances in recent years is due to Dance
Moms, it is obviously apparent that the shift is occurring. Here we have to
stop and think; What effects do these over sexualized dances have on the young
girls and their development? According to Freudian psychology, emphasis on
Freud’s psychosexual stages, girls of the ages 10-14 are either going to be in
the latency or genital stage of sexual development, which if Freudian psychology
was still practiced, if something hindered or effected the girl’s development
in the latency stage, she would never fully be able to develop sexually. The
latency stage focuses on the cognitive and social development of the
individual, particularly the repression of sexual feelings. If these girls are
being encouraged to be oversexualized, with tight costumes with cutaways and
fish nets, as well as “stripper-like” moves, there may never be this latency
stage, meaning girls will not truly know how to act in future sexual
situations. Now by no means does this mean this will able to all girls, the
fact of the matter is that many psychologists do not even acknowledge Freudian
psychology as valid or logically anymore, but the possibility is there that
girls not only exposed to this kind of dance, but have been participating in
it, may be more likely to act in more sexual ways during high school.
Besides the possibility of more sexual actions, there also
lays the possibilities of many other harmful effects. (I use the words
possibilities because nothing is the same for everyone, so there the arguments
being made cannot be applied to all young dancers.) These dances can harm a
girl’s self-esteem, self-image, and self-worth. If a girl does not deem herself
to be “beautiful” or does not have a super skinny, dancer’s body she may feel
inferior and below the other dancers while doing slinky dance moves to sexy
songs, forever damaging the way she will view herself. Or on the other end of
the spectrum, a dancer that has the so called “look” and competes frequently or
does a lot of hip hop and jazz classes (typically the two classes with the
skimpiest outfits and most risqué moves), she may develop a dependency on heavy
makeup and revealing clothing to feel beautiful or comfortable in her own skin.
If this is the case we are teaching these girls it is okay to dress like that
(which according to recent feminist movements it is, but according to school
dress codes and parental orders it is not.) In terms of the status quo as well,
clothing that is tight, short, or shows too much skin is deemed as “slutty”,
and quite frankly high school girls are mean and will call a girl harsh names
based on looks, thus further lowering her self-esteem that could already
possibly be damaged. Plus, in current rape culture a common question for a rape
victim is “What were you wearing?” If girls become use to wearing skin tight
clothing from dance and continue to do so in everyday life, saying they were
wearing a crop top and black mini skirt may get them the response “Well, you
were kind of asking for it now weren’t you”. I wish I could say this is a far-fetched
scenario, but it is (unfortunately) a common occurrence.
The most astounding thing is that parents encourage this
behavior. Parents pay large sums of money for classes, competitions, costumes,
recitals, etc. and when they see their five year old dancing to “Single Ladies”
or their nine year old shaking his/her butt to “Anaconda”, they are not
appalled, but rather they applaud. We are, as a society, encouraging this
damaging behavior, solely for the fact that it is “entertainment”. We live in a
world where being a teen mom is cool because you can get on TV, and to get
attention you have to do something wrong or inappropriate. We are putting
children’s development at risk, because we think it is “cute” to see ten year
olds doing skanky hip hop moves. If we don’t return to more age appropriate
time of dances, we are not just damaging this generation but all future ones to
come, and the issues that can arise are no laughing matter.
That's all I have for now. Until next blog!- Taylor Barton
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