World of Dance is yet another show I’m forced to watch every season it’s on. As reality TV goes, it’s…okay. It has the all the usual judgophiliac garbage (phony baloney turd-in-the-punchbowl posturing, nonsensical criteria/scoring, ridiculous white space to action ratio, 20 fricking cutaways in a sub-2 minute performance, endless extremely rude questions that have goddam nothing to do with dancing, etc.), and the single-elimination format is absolutely moronic…did we learn nothing from Star Search? Still, I haven’t found anything incredibly objectionable. Plus there’s not as much shrieking as So You Think You Can Dance or America’s Got Talent, so there’s that.
But there’s something that’s been bothering me for a long time, and after watching Jonas and Ruby in the duels, I can’t put it off any longer. And since, well, I can’t JUST be about American Ninja Warrior, I’m going to come out and say it.
Why does nearly everyone wear the same boring long-sleeved shirts and full-length pants?
No no, easy there bucko, don’t fly off the handle, I’m serious.
Doesn’t matter if it’s hip-hop, ballroom, tap, samba, belly, experimental, or whatever. It’s the same plain old legs-covering pants and arms-covering shirts nearly every time. The goddam heel team was wearing full-length pants. Heck, I haven’t even seen variations like super-baggy rap pants or harem pants. And this is a problem for me.
All right, cards on the table. I’ve never had any kind of issue with the amount of skin various sports have required competitors, male and female (although mostly the latter) to show. If the rules say you have to wear a bikini, you have to wear a bikini. It’s a sport. It’s all about rules, many of which you’ll find stupid or pointless. If you’re not willing to follow them, you can’t compete in that sport. It’s that simple. In many cases, there are practical concerns. Figure skating, for example, requires the judges to see body lines, and to see body lines you need to see bodies. Swimming requires something that won’t generate a lot of resistance in the water. Bottom line, if these jocks are going in with their eyes open, there’s no grounds for crying “sexism” or “inappropriate”.
I don’t have any problems with a janitor or a carpenter or a trucker wearing drab clothes. If you’re a dancer on a nationally-televised primetime show, you should be beautiful, dangit. I’ve seen a few splashes of color (that Brazilian group?) and at least one group that wasn’t terrified of showing their legs, but for the most part it’s the same plain outfits that’d be appropriate for a staff meeting. I think the tap dancer even wore a tie for crying out loud. I want a reality show about a bunch of contestants working in ordinary outfits, I’ll watch Masterchef. That’s the main reason Ruby stood out so much for me. The way she showed in the first 20 seconds that she wasn’t afraid to show off her legs, like a real dancer, that she wanted us to see her body (oh, that quick change was pretty cool, too)…that, THAT is what I came to see, not an endless parade of interchangable drones.
Why is this? I’ve never seen any dance competition like this before. Was there pressure on NBC to modesty it up? Did they get complaints? Was Eva Igo involved? It was Eva Igo, wasn’t it?
News sites are are useless, just have the usual drivel about ratings and sneak peeks.
