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Little Single Ladies

21/5/2010

3 Comments

 
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Last week a group of 9 & 10 year old girls gyrating their way through a sexy dance performance horrified many, me included. 

The girls are obviously talented dancers, but the sexy skimpy black lacy outfits combined with the provacative dance moves amount to a degrading and totally inappropriate performance.

Facing widespread criticism, the girls parents have defended their daughters' performance:


"The costumes are designed for movement and to show bodylines..."

This interview makes the whole episode that much sadder for me.  The parents seem to have missed the point entirely.  As Danielle Miller, in the clip below points out, these girls are actually more scantily clad than Beyonce was in the original music video. 

I think one issue that this interview with the parents raises is how public our lives have become.  Whereever your children are, whatever they are doing, there is a chance that their activities are being videoed and that this video could end up on the world wide web.

If these girls had performed this dance a few years ago, it's highly unlikely anyone except the attendees would ever have seen it. However, it's 2010 and someone videoed the performance, put on YouTube and it went viral - it's now been viewed over 2 million times.   The saturation of technology in our lives and the ease at which information can be spread across the world means that as parents we have to be ever more vigilant about protecting our children against exploitation.
3 Comments
Anna Hughes link
8/6/2010 05:54:52 am

Hi Rachel

Truly outrageous. I've enjoyed scanning through your blog. Your post with the story about the violinist is great!

I was thinking about a Facebook page that I like and often read called Motherhood Denied. If you're on Facebook look it up as I think a lot of what she writes would resonate with you. Cheers. Anna :)

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Leanna Veal
24/6/2010 02:37:01 am

That is terrible!!!

Another thought from this interesting discussion is....

What then is the appropriate age that parents can let their daughters behave in such a way and it not be thought of inappropriate?

Or even can you put an age on behaving in such a way?

Hmmm - I dont know the answer to either of those.

Leanna

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Rachel Hansen link
24/6/2010 04:38:36 am

It is terrible isn't.
That is an interesting question Leanna.
I don't think we can put an age on it. I think that the time when it stops being reprehensible is when a girl/woman is old enough to make a conscious choice about her behaviour. When she is mature enough to fully understand the implications of the words she is dancing to, the messages her gyrating hips and sexy lingere are conveying. I am not sure I would have fully understood this at 16, or even 18.
Once a woman reaches this point, it really is her own decision how she acts. Society must allow our children their childhood before reaching this point though.
Hmm, big questions. I wonder how Beyonce's mother/grandmother feel?!

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    Rachel is a writer and educator whose fields of interest include sexuality education, gender, feminism and youth development.

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