Dancers wear tight, minimal clothing because they need to be able to move freely and the audience/instructors/judges need to be able to see the lines of the body. The classic outfits are leotards, but that can get a bit dull, so you see a lot of adaptations of street clothes or themed clothes that are tighter and smaller than would normally be seen.
Clothes tend to be shiny and decorated because that is what catched the eye on stage. Most dance routines are designed for competition and in competition you want to do anything you can to stand out. Makeup is much heavier than in real life because thats all that will be seen in bright lights and long distances. Many of my nightmare are of my old skating instructor coming around yelling “more rouge! more rouge!” before competitions. It made us look silly, but without it we’d look like featureless sheets when performing.
And a costume is a costume. It’s a stylization- something meant to catch the eye, to facinate, to look good, but not neccesarily to titillate. A lot of our skating costumes had bare midriffs and the like, but we never thought to think about it as a sex thing.
Have you people not seen the kids’ clothing sections of stores lately? It’s all hooker gear. Short rabbit fur coats, nylon panties in leopard print or with pictures of cats no less, spandex, fishnets. No kidding.
even sven got it-the make up is merely stage make up (my friend in high school was in the color guard and she always looked like that) and the costumes are usually brief because you can’t really wear a lot of restrictive clothing to dance in. My friends who took dance lessons always had a few costumes like that lying around that we played “Dress Up” in.
However, the high heels part baffles me. I can’t see a young child dancing in heels.
Could the “high heels” have been tap shoes? Or ballroom dance heels? I can’t imagine an adult dancer wearing those outside, damn things are expensive.
But kids are that way sometimes “nooo, I want to stay in my ‘cool’ dance outfit, Nooooo, I just GOT these I want to WEAR them”. And if they were in a mall, on an insides surface, and possibly had the recital somewhere else in the same mall? I can see where some mom’s might cave.
The theme of her outfit, hotpants, fishnets etc, it may have been for a Cabaret type theme rather than a hookerish one.
I have two daughters in dance classes and I have been appalled at the “costumes” they want these little children to wear. And as parents, we have no say in what costumes are chosen (except, at an extreme, to simply pull the child out of class and refuse to allow her to continue or to participate in the recital).
As for “beauty pageants” for little girls, you can imagine my opinion. It’s not positive.
I think you’ve brought up a good point. Likewise there has been some other possible suggestions as to why she was dressed that way.
I don’t have kids, but I remember being one, and sometimes kids love the most ridiculous things.
Maybe the clothes were a Christmas gift. Maybe she is a pageant girl. Maybe she begged her parents to let her wear the clothes in public.
She was with her mother, not standing on the corner of Whore Street and Pimp Road.
I agree, the outfit sounds like it was in poor taste (for a woman of any age). But there may be more to the story. And if we heard it, there might not be a need to pit the parents or the girl.
I can agree with almost al the points made. And let’s forget that I had included myself in the Pitting for even noticing.
Truly, an odd situation al the way around.
To be honest, if she had been older (or older looking), I probably would’ve noticed and then shrugged it off. I’ve seen plenty of cheap tramps in my day and have even courted some of them.
It was the entire package of the scene, namely: young girl, innappropriate attire (imo), public place, New Year’s Eve, my own experience with female family in pageants/recitals/events, my disgust with myself for even noticing, and current or ongoing news stories about abuses that caused me to post this. I wasn’t even sure of whether to use the Pit or MPSIMS until I thought about the possible replies.
That reminds me. I wanted to say this in the Confederate flag prom gown thread, but now that it’s dropped, I don’t want to bring it back to page 1 just for this.
I’m not convinced that the teen was wearing too much blush in the photo, or that she normally looks like that. It appeared to be one of two possibilities:
—She has highlights in the sides of her hair that, when caught by the lights, glowed reddish, and in the small photo, made it look as if the color was on her face.
—The photo did appear to have been staged, not taken on prom night. So, knowing she was going to be photographed under harsh lights, she overcompensated with a triple or quadruple application of blush, not wanting to appear washed out.
I see we are probably out of serious discussion points now, so…
If any Mod/Admin thinks this thread might now cause any you-know-what* problems, feel free to end it.
I’m amazed it took up to post 23 for SSW to be referenced! Good for gobear. Tho I sympathize with chaoticdonkey as I also was racing through the thread hoping to be the first!
