Chuckle

One of the least sexualized things I’ve done with my life is take (and teach) dance classes. Maybe it’s just that I live in a small town in the Midwest, but jazz and modern classes here, at every studio I’ve ever been to, have everything to do with somewhat dorky dance steps from the 1940s mixed in with a little bit of “hammer-time.” Girls and boys alike are dressed in full length tops and sparkly pants certainly aren’t tight.

When I have been to some skanky clubs with friends I can’t begin to do the things with my hips that those girls do. It’s simple: I’ve been taught not to. I’ve been taught to have utter control of that part of my body, and I’ve been told that hooching it up is ugly. Why is this a bad thing to teach our daughters?

Now, I realize that one might have issue with wearing leotards and tights, but my current studio doesn’t require them. When I taught a few years ago I didn’t either. People could wear workout clothes, or ballet clothes, or whatever the heck they were comfortable in.

If you are at a studio or company where it’s clear a girl must be anorexic to get parts, it’s just as easy to leave and find one where that isn’t the case. It’s sad that some girl’s parents force them into such a situation at more serious ballet studios, but it’s not completely the same thing as forcing ones daughter into modeling. There are studios where skinny or fat if you can do the work you get to show off in the once yearly recital–period. It’s ultimately usually up to the parent what sort of place their daughter or son lands at.

Is it the girly and floofy costumes? They aren’t a necessity. Heck, performing isn’t a necessity.

For young girls and boys, dance provides an alternative to sports that teaches flexibility and coordination, and helps people develop a decent work out regimen. That’s really about all it is, at least, where I’ve landed myself.

For me, a 25 year old PhD candidate, my Monday night classes are all about meeting with a group of women my age and older, cracking out some champagne, talking about what bothers us (sometimes even the patriarchy!) and our accomplishments too, and yes, working out. We do ballet, tap, jazz, and spanish, and none of this is really sexy in a conventional sense.

So what gives? How is doing this giving in to the patriarchy?

Thanks for pointing this out and I think the link was necessary.

If you ever happen across Brian Cobb of Michigan, do please whack him repeatedly in his soft parts with a spiked club, and tell him it’s from me. Ta.

Better yet, consignment shops contain little of this sort of trashy crap for girls because 1)it isn’t fashionable for more than a year and 2) it is such cheap crap and poor quality, it doesn’t make it to the shop in saleable condition. Plenty of cute, girly, modest stuff makes it through the sieve. What you end up finding is LL Bean, Gap Kids, Gymboree, and Hannah Anderson sorts of clothes, nicely broken in and at a fraction of the original price.

“If our society really made the mental well being of females a priority then kiddie beauty pagents, kiddie modeling sites and other activities deemed to be potentially damaging to a child’s health would be banned, period.”

Not to pick on you, Kate, because I believe we agree in principle, but… I don’t think ‘making the mental well-being of females a priority’ is going to be enough to accomplish what you suggest.

There needs to be a wholesale reevaluation of the MALE role in society. Patriarchy is what makes porn possible. Sympathy for the victims is well and good and should happen, sure, but without a reconstruction of the male role in society, all we’re doing is putting a band-aid on a cut that will reopen time and again.

Now, I have no idea what post-patriarchal sex would be like, but I bet it would include far less of the anxiety and obsessive behavior it does now.