This young girls’ dance routine has been all over the intertubes lately, with a lot of people opining that these girls are much too young to be doing these moves, wearing these costumes, etc.
Take a couple of minutes and go watch these girls, approximate age = 7 years old, perform. They do a dance routine to Beyonce’s Single Ladies.
What do y’all think, Dopers? Is there anything wrong with this routine? If so, what? If not, why not?
I’m sure that any child, male or female, has seen people dancing in a similar style in similar outfits on TV so its not like their childhoods are being corrupted by doing this. Those same girls would wear a bikini at a beach, so its not like society believes that a 7 year old’s naked belly creates child molesters. And I don’t think you can really complain about the dance moves because it’s a dance competition and that’s the style of dancing in vogue. You can’t win a competition without letting the dancers move their body fluidly and into all sorts of positions – which is by nature at least somewhat suggestive even if that’s not the intent.
I’d only wonder about who decided to put them in the outfits. The girls aren’t coming into any harm by the dancing, but it’s an odd person to order up outfits like that for 7 year olds. Probably it’s just an idiot who didn’t think, but it’s worth checking. But beyond that, I couldn’t care less. The limits of propriety are artificial. By the standards of the 19th century, the little girls of today would be considered to be dressed like sluts no matter what they wore in the current fashion.
Yes there is something wrong with it. The music is god awful.
On a serious note, children have only be treated as "children since the mid forties. The concept of children doing things like this being inappropriate in the US is relatively new.
Apparently that’s some sort of World Dance Competition? I was a bit surprised to find out that there was a dance competition of that sort for girls that young, and I thought the outfits were at least a little creepily age-inappropriate. But I guess if you’re going to have a dance competition for young girls in the first place, you’re going to have to expect them to perform dance routines, which is what they were doing.
I’d hit it.
Whaaaat?
OK, personally? I’d not let *my *daughter dance like that in one of those outfits at that age. So I guess I’m against it.
And? I never understand this line of argument. There’s a lot of things people thought were appropriate in the past that were bad ideas.
As for the video…yeah creepy and inappropriate. I don’t think it’s going to destroy any lives just in very poor taste and a bad idea.
Meh, it’s just a dance routine, and it looked like they were having fun too. It’s not like they were poledancing.
I’m not really sure. On the one hand there are definitely things that make me go, “EW.” But then there are things I think are fine and other people will react to with, “Wrong!” Like there was a Gap ad with little girls that some people found objectionable. (It was little girls singing something about “Talk to the moose.”) For a split second, one of the girls does a “stripper move”–she kind of sticks out her butt. But that makes me think that are we so messed up as a society that anything that a little girl does is, “Oh no, sexualization of minors?!” I don’t think that if a little boy stuck out his rear we’d be wondering about his sexualization.
As for this particular video…OK, a bit creepy. Mostly I agree that the music’s annoying.
Yeah, but children prior to that time were also shouldered with a lot more responsibility and expected to behave as adults. Children today are much more dependent on their parents than they were in the past, and don’t have as much experience making judgments about adult things.
And, as Darkhold points out, we can’t really assume that since it was considered okay in the past it was actually okay.
It’s really the outfits that make it weird.
I don’t think the problem is worrying about attracting pedophiles. The problem is sexualizing children before they are cognitively capable of making judgments about what it means to be sexual. Teaching a child to behave in a sexual manner and to sexualize herself before she is developmentally able to handle the consequences of sexual activity is a bad idea.
That said, there is worse in the world than this. It doesn’t exactly make me feel outrage or anything. Just irritation.
They will have a great future in stripping.
Holy fuck, they are dressed like hookers and the dance moves are clearly sexual. The parents and the dance instructors should be in jail. What next, a performance of kids in black face? Maybe we can have little Irish kids dress up like leprechauns and pretend to be drunk, or put buck teeth and straw hats on Chinese kids.
Poor decision, but you’ve got to keep up with the Jones family or your kid will be left behind.
Right?
I don’t see anything wrong with the dance part of it but the outfits were not appropriate. If they kept the tops and put them in full length leggings I don’t think it would be nearly as bad, mostly because I don’t think any of those girls thought they were doing anything sexual at all. Mostly they probably thought they were pretty and flashy like older girls on cheerleading teams or like Beyonce in her music videos.
I don’t have a problem with most of the dance moves…though I’d cut the pelvic thrusts. The spinning/kicking stuff is fine.
The costumer needs fired. Seven year old girls do not appear on stage in lingerie/hooker wear.
A bad idea in what sense? What negative thing actually happens because of this?
Holy Hannah, that was extremely uncomfortable to watch. Perfect fodder for
this guy: This Pedophile Game Show Host Will Make Your Stomach Turn - Video | eBaum's World
Why do you think that this is somehow teaching the girls to act sexually? So far as they’re concerned, dancing is no more sexual than playing leap-frog.
That’s probably what sexually abused children think as well (at least to start). But the adults are sexualizing the girls.
But the costumer is always right!
They’re dressing in the style of the times and dancing in the style of the times to an audience of professional dance judges, not a group of leering, drooling men. While it’s probably safe to assume that children can pick up on when things are fishy and they’re being used – like if an adult seems to be spanking you for his own enjoyment rather than because you did something wrong – I don’t see how this situation would lead the child to sense that at all.
Even sex itself isn’t necessarily abusive to a child. It’s probably a decent bet that in Ancient Greece, the apprentice warrior boys didn’t think a thing of practicing oral sex on the older men because that was the accepted norm of the time, no different from bringing your teacher an apple. It’s only when there’s an underlying tone of being taking advantage of in some odd way that children get confused.