Words on butt: Inappropriate for kids?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Bravo has a new series called Sports Kids Moms and Dads, which I’m a bit surprised that no one seems to be watching, since no one’s responded to my thread, nor, the last time I checked, started one of their own. I’d thought the same people who were watching Showbiz Moms and Dads would want to check this out, but perhaps the trainwreck factor of the earlier series left everyone too burnt out to pursue this one.

Anyway, one of the kids is an 8 y/o girl named Sarah who is an All-Star cheerleader (strictly competitive, not for school teams), and she’s one of the two most-discussed players in this series in other forums. There’s a high ick factor in her scenes, due to the fact that she’s being told to shake what she doesn’t have, wears heavy makeup and glitter for competitions, and is on a squad (one of two) with high school girls. But one item that seems crucial to a lot of people is that, when she was shown in a dance studio, she was wearing shorts with “DANCER” on the butt.

Now, in context, that seems like just one more instance of premature sexualization. But I’m not sure that it’s a bad thing in and of itself. The shorts were a relatively modest length, and since she was only wearing them in a dance studio, not to school or anything, the idea didn’t creep me out anywhere near as much as the cheer coach telling her, “Shake it, girl!” (in an earlier scene where she was wearing shorts without lettering).

A lot of things have changed since I was eight years old, but I’m not sure that every single one of them is for the worse. At that time, it seemed like a lot of girls my age were embarrassed at even having a butt, much less drawing attention to it. But it seems like nowadays, girls, even little girls, are nowhere near as self-conscious or ashamed of their bodies as my generation was.

In fact, there have been some threads on this, and a lot of Dopers have seemed to be of the opinion that kid-butt is just the cutest thing…as long as the kid is okay with it. OTOH, I don’t think there’s a Doper to be found who thinks that sexualization of children is a good thing.

So I’m not convinced that shorts that say “DANCER” equals child sexualization. Shorts that say “HOT” or anything to that effect, certainly. But if kid butt is so darn cute, and the kid is a dancer, and she only wears the shorts in an all-female studio, and she herself is okay with it, then it’s acceptable. Maybe just barely, but acceptable.

I personally would have died. But that’s because I had a lot of issues with my mom often trying (the operative word being “trying”; she didn’t often succeed, and eventually gave up, grudgingly.) to make a spectacle of me, and mark me as even more of the odd one out than I already was in my family. We also had a lot of disputes in clothing stores, with her wanting to cute me up, while I wanted to look like an Ivy Leaguer. [Marge Simpson]How about this cute sunsuit? It has a starfish on the fanny![/MS]

So if you’re still reading this, it comes down to two questions.

  1. Are those shorts, specifically saying “DANCER”, not anything else, and worn in an all-female dance studio, leaving out what the girl is being told to do, inappropriate?

  2. Is it a good or a bad thing for girls, even 8 y/o girls, to lack self-consciousness? And iff bad, why?

2

I don’t think the shorts are necessarily inappropriate, in context. I’m not crazy about “words on the butt” myself and wouldn’t pick them out for my daughters. But if my 9 year old wanted shorts like that, strictly to wear at an all-female dance studio, and she actually needed shorts, it would probably be okay with me.

Lack self-consciousness? As in, not thinking about whether she has a butt, or what she’s told to do with it? Blithely unaware of any sexual import in “Shake it” or having “Dancer” on her butt? I think it’s good to lack self-consciousness of that kind, at least for a while. All too soon, girls get hyper-aware of their body parts, sexual connotations, etc. I say, let them be innocent if possible at least through fourth or fifth grade.

I guess I view it as my job to nix anything that would lead to “premature self-consciousness,” up to a point. Hence, I’ve got semi-strict rules about the kind of clothes my girls can wear (the girls are 9 and 5, FWIW), what movies they can see (mostly animated, with some thoughtfully selected exceptions), and what television they can or cannot watch (they watch very little; maybe a couple of hours on the weekends, and no music videos). We have a very strict no makeup rule as well. My girls are clueless what a booty is, how to shake it enticingly, or even, up to a point, why anyone would bother doing so.

Being unselfconscious as I’ve defined it is, I think, a good thing. The fact that the girl in Sports Kids seems to have little clue is actually positive, I think. Urging her to “shake it!” and wear makeup is really distateful to me, even though she’s doing it as part of a cheerleading competition. I wouldn’t outlaw it for others, but I wouldn’t let my kid participate, either.

Mrs. Furthur

3

Lacking self-consciousness in general; I should have said. Not just little girls who are training to be cheerleaders, dancers or gymnasts, but any little girl. Not being embarrassed to wear a swimsuit, or a gym outfit, or pajamas: anything other than outerwear.

Again, I’m bringing myself into it, but I remember how I used to dread going to my mom’s friend’s house where they had a pool, because I knew all those middle-aged women were going to squeal and make comments. My mom once wanted to enter me in the Little Miss Pink Tomato contest. Which would have required me to wear a one-piece swimsuit and stand on a stage with a hundred other little girls, displaying our non-womanly figures to the (I anticipated) mockery of the adult judges. You can bet I refused that one.

4

Just to make you feel real good about it all (HA!) I had a 10 year old student (a dancer, interestingly) show up for voice lesson with shorts that read “BOOTY” across the ass.

I think I lost my lunch right there.

5

I’m not sure how much you hang around little kids/young adults, but this style of clothing has gotten quite popular over the past couple of years. The only kind I’ve ever seen that I ever liked was on a little girl who must have been four years old, who wore a pair of shorts that read “BEACH” across her derriere. (Get it? Get it? :slight_smile: )

As for the issue of parents pushing this style of clothing on kids, it could very well come down to that, but it could also be a matter of the kid just thinking it looks cute and wanting to ape the current fashions. There was a minor kerfuffle in our family recently over my (far younger than me) seventeen-year-old cousin wanting to wear shorts-with-words-on-the-bum, and her mother outlawing it absolutely.

I know I’ll probably get a whole lot of flak for this, but way back in the Dark Ages when I was a dancer, the general attire simply was not what could be called modest by any reasonable stretch of the imagination. I’m not sure why this is–maybe because dancers get overheated easily and don’t feel as though they need to be covered up from throat to ankle around other girls in a similar state? Regardless of the reasons why, I do think this is generally true. Is it appropriate to wear immodest clothes such as shorts-with-words-on-the-bum in the dance studio? I have no idea. But is it generally done? Absolutely.

A bit of both, I think. IME, girls who are overly self-conscious have often had wonky ideas drilled into their heads by their parents, and might well grow up to be more than a bit neurotic because of bad parental influence. However, some self-consciousness is a good thing, simply because there are a lot of crazies out there. I completely agree with the idea that “women should be allowed to walk naked down an alley late at night without deserving to be raped or attracting rapists.” But regardless of this, the fact remains that there are a lot of people out there with nefarious motives. Just because one should be permitted to wear whatever attire one wants doesn’t mean that there won’t be people who will make assumptions that aren’t true because of it. (If that, er, makes sense…heh.) So yes, wear whatever clothes you like, but don’t be shocked if someone is moved to inappropriateness because of them. It shouldn’t be that way, of course, but I think it often is. And small children who are unable to defend themselves do need to be protected from this. They obviously don’t realize that wearing immodest attire might entice those with less-than-pure motives, but it may well do so.

Wait…what was my point again? :slight_smile: Oh, yes: that inducing children to some level of self-consciousness is good, even though they may not realize it, because it could avoid attracting crazies.

(And yes, I do realize that clothing may not necessarily have anything to do with attracting crazies–plenty of women in perfectly modest attire have had terrible things happen to them–but I think many women in somewhat-revealing clothes have had the experience of being ogled by a stranger or even worse. Clothing is not in any way the sole factor in attracting those with nefarious purposes, but it may well be something that contributes to that, and I think that’s something to be avoided as much as possible.)

Arghhh, I know this is going to come across wrong and I’m going to get jumped on for it. Basically: wear whatever you like. You have a perfect right to do so. But there might be pervy criminal types around. This shouldn’t be so, but it is. Therefore, it might be a good idea to dress somewhat-modestly, as it may discourage the crazies (although will not necessarily do so). Children are not aware of the fact that there may be crazies lurking, so they should be encouraged to be somewhat modest, as this may (or may not) have the effect of not encouraging crazies.

6

I know it has. I was actually somewhat surprised by the reaction to this girl’s dance costume. Everyone was saying “OMG she has words on her butt!!!” and I was like, “Where’ve you been lately?”

Hee!

And that’s the point at which the words almost become more important than the placement. There’s no connotation to wearing the name of your softball team on the seat of your warmups, for instance. But the more word options you have, the further you get into a gray area. “Princess”, for instance—is that arrogant, or merely fanciful? Does it matter if the girl is 7 or 17? Is it okay if it’s on a shirt instead of shorts? I don’t know; I’m just wondering.

Which is what I was getting at. I don’t see how dancewear is ipso facto suggestive. What are they supposed to wear, tweeds? A burka?

And that’s another gray area. See, in my opinion, there’s nothing wrong with a little girl who has no breasts at all wearing a bikini. The bottom should be modest, of course, but if there’s nothing to reveal, how can a bikini top be “too revealing”? Or a halter, or a tank top? Once upon a very long time ago, it was okay for pre-pubescent kids to wear as little as necessary in the heat of summer. No one saw anything wrong with it (or admitted it if they did), and girls didn’t have to start covering up until they were old enough to have something to cover up.

But nowadays, it seems like the standards of age-appropriate are increasingly hard to pin down. First there was the matter of teenage girls wearing children’s clothes (pinafores, school uniform), to provocative effect. Then it seems like the connotation stayed attached to the clothes themselves, so that when a 10 y/o girl wears a schoolgirl uniform, it’s automatically seen as fetish gear, even though it was originally supposed to be appropriate for that age! Little girls wearing women’s clothes is suggestive, because it “makes them look older”, even if they have nothing to reveal. Older girls and young women wearing kids’ clothes is suggestive because they supposedly appeal to pedophiles, even though they’re at or above the age of consent. Seems to me that it’s the people looking who are making these judgements, not the people who are wearing the clothes.

7

Dance clothes are weird.

Thank goodness there are no photos of the outfits I insisted on wearing to dance classes (because everyone else was wearing them). Comparitively shorts with “DANCER” on the butt seem quite normal, not especially revealing, and not the least bit inappropriate.

Also, I think of myself as on the prudish side, and I don’t really even notice words-on-the-butt in and of themselves, it depends on the words. Brand names, team names, nicknames/first names, (which is what I usually see) strike me more as regrettable fashion choices, not as hypersexualized. Of course, certain words written on someone’s ass are just tasteless (“booty”).

Strangely enough, the dance classes where I’d wear the tight, revealing, (and so stupid) clothes were the same place where I learned that my butt was way too big, my stomach was way too big, I was fat, I was built wrong, my feet were horrible, and made it so everywhere that wasn’t class I had big, baggy clothing so that no one could see how horrible I looked. I was not seen in a swimsuit without a t-shirt for decades.

I don’t think that was good.

In general, I think it’s a good thing for girls to lack self-conciousness as long as possible. So long as they’re not flashing people, I don’t think they should have to worry about their bodies.

8

I don’t either! Dance should be a means of self-expression, and a way to get in tune with your body, not something to make you hate it! If you didn’t want to be a professional dancer (or did you?) then what on earth was your body wrong for?

9

All things considered (at dance rehearsal, the fact that it was “dancer” and not something more suggestive), and of course knowing nothing about the girl or her behavior, I’d say that it’s not something I’d immediately get worked up about. Now, the fact that someone (her or her parents) deliberately chose for her to wear that knowing that she wasn’t just going to dance class but would also be seen on national TV makes it a bit more questionable to me, but still not something that shocks me.

Unlike, on the other hand, the . . . physically mature . . . 14-16 year old girl I saw a couple of years ago at a Chattanooga Lookouts baseball game, wearing inappropriately tight and short shorts with the word “Cherry” and a picture of same on the butt. I think she was trying to keep the shorts from getting dirty, because I don’t believe she sat down once the entire game – just kept walking back and forth with a friend across the concourse and up and down the aisles of the stands. All I could think the whole time was “Who the hell lets their daughter out of the house wearing those?”.

10

I can’t speak for dance studios, but in general public, if a girl is wearing words on her ass, don’t act offended when guys end up looking.