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Hello World!!!
I am feeling a little melancholy, but since I’m paying for this Web site, I guess I need to post…even when I don’t feel like it. 🙂
So here’s the topic of discussion for this post…Last week in the A, there was a media storm surrounding the Jonesboro High School dance team. Apparently, the team was disabanded after the girls performed a salacious dance routine at a basketball game last month. The girls, wearing tiny shorts and thigh high stockings, eventually ended up pulling some of the male students from the audience and performed in front of them as they sat in chairs. I cannot imagine being a teacher there and not feeling embarassed…
But here’s the thing…before some of y’all accuse me of being a hypocrite, I was on my high school drill team, and we relished wearing our short shorts and flouncy skirts on Fridays before the football games where we performed during halftime. And while we performed several drills that were not sexual, on occasion, we mixed some dancing into our routines. And we did get a little sexy sometimes…in fact, I made it a point to never invite my parents (namely my father) to a single game to see me perform…he would have NOT been pleased, and he might have forbidden me to be on the drill team had he known what was up. (Think the movie “Footloose!” Ha, ha) I was on the drill team for three years, and if my memory is correct, during my final year on the team,  the captain of our drill team was a girl who aspired to be a stripper…at least that was the rumor….so you can guess what some of our routines looked like…
So did I ever feel embarassed about some of our more suggestive dance routines…somewhat…I certainly never wanted anyone from my church to see me perform…but I did feel a strange sense of power in moving my body that way. Maybe the media contributed to the issue…I don’t know…but there is something about being a teenage girl that makes you want to test the limits of the power you have in shakin’ whatcha mama gave ya…Now should that be on display for the whole student body to see?…that’s another issue…
So if the media is a contributing factor in influencing young women to be overly sexualized in their dancing and other forms of expression, can we really blame them since that type of expression is seen as lucrative and powerful in other arenas? Remember Destiny’s Child “Cater 2 U” performance? That choreography included gyrating, chairs and men as well, and there was no uproar about that…
A fellow blogger and friend discusses her angst her with Beyonce, Booty-Shaking and Child Raising on her blog, enjoyceinglife.blogspot.com. Check out it…good insights there…
Anyway, I remember what is was like to to wanna shake whatcha mama gave ya for everyone to see…Truth be told, I still enjoy that on occasion, but I also realize that allowing our girls to be overly sexualized is very detrimental and can lead to women believing that much of their power is in their bodies rather than in their minds and spirits…
What do you think? (The video of the Jonesboro High School dance team routine is at the head of this post. By the way, you can hear Beyonce in the background.)
Any thoughts?
P.S. I am a Beyonce fan by the way….:)
We can blame it on the media, rappers, videos, or whatever. The bottom line is the ultimate blame lies on the parents. Generally speaking, I don’t think females get that “shaking whatcha mama gave ya” is not something to be proud of. What one does in the privacy of their home is one thing, but a public display of booty shaking is not something us males look at in a positive manner. Yeah, it gets attention, of course. But it is not the kinda of attention a lady wants. Then again, I’ve been wrong before.
As for the video, I’m just surprised not a single parent, teacher, or adult for that matter stopped it. I’m thankful I don’t have a daughter. It would be hard to get her to see things the way I do, considering some of her friends, society as a whole, and even some of her friends’ parents thinks certain behavior in public is just fine. Shaking is just one of many public displays I see from teenage girls that has apparently been accepted as the norm. And boys are no better. But hey, that’s a totally different subject matter.
Shake Whatcha Mama Gave Ya by JT Money, will make almost every female in a club absolutely loose their mind and dignity for three minutes and some change. Meanwhile, Behold A Lady by Andre 3000, has never, and never will be played in a club. Let alone discourage shaking whatcha mama gave ya for some lustful attention from males and/or females considering the times. Let me stop because now I think I’m being hypocritical. Andre said shake it like a Polaroid Picture on the same album… err CD.
The problem here is that they weren’t imitating Beyonce. They were imitating STRIPPERS. Only strippers give lap dances. I fault the teacher/advisor assigned to oversee the group because kids will do whatever you allow them to do. Why wasn’t the advisor punished or reprimanded? We need to be responsible for the actions of the young people in our charge.
At Westlake High School in Atlanta in 2006-2007, the prinicipal said no. She had a dress rehearsal and pulled the uniforms. Her reward was angry parents that had her ousted at the end of the next school year.
We are hypocrites. We say someoone should stand up and say no booty shorts girls, pull your pants up boys and when they do we crucify them. This proves our kids are confused when we try to have it both ways.
We are both victims and creators of our Culture of Lust, aren’t we! Well, as the mom of a 5-year-old little girl and a relatively new follower of Christ, I am seeing things differently these days. In the past, I’d have been all about defending those girls. But now, I don’t believe public booty shakin’ is part of God’s plan. He wants us to save our precious purity for the sanctity of marriage. I realize that too late for myself, of course. But not too late for my daughter. The trick will be teaching my daughter amid the impure world we live in. That’s where Jesus will have his work cut out for him…but I will trust in him.
While the dancing was definitely over the top, particularly sitting males in the chair as if they were going to receive lap dances, this shows a lack of guidance at the school. These young ladies obviously need closer guidance and their outlet from an average school day should not be taken away. I feel this was not an over-reaction (except the media), but the wrong reaction.
I think that is has gone too far. I’m so sick of young girls trying to grow up so fast and think that being oversexed is the answer. Someone mentioned that Beyonce is not the problem, but I disagree. She’s an adult now, but for a while her image was something that just didn’t sit right with me. I was asking myself, what parent would allow they child to promote such an image of shaking their booty, wearing revealing clothing, and gyrating in front of the cameras in every video? Maybe not every video, but you get the idea. It’s just not her, but the way our women are strolled out in front of us. Sex symbols sell records. I remember Jill Scott stated that she had a hard time getting a deal because of the way she looked. Not the typical artist that can sell records based on sex appeal. Look at the female artists and see how they are paraded in front of the masses.
Look at youtube and count how many videos you see of young girls, sometimes babies imitating what they see on the screen. That’s just trifling. I remember a while ago there was a black college magazine I picked up in a salon. The president of a college, can’t remember which one, stated he didn’t want any “big” girls on the dance team. He questioned if anyone would find them appealing. But look at our HBCU dance teams. The clothes, the movements, the choreography. I mean, it runs deep. Even in the gym, I took a hip-hop dance class and couldn’t even perform due to the amount of men watching from the sidelines enjoying the routine from what it did for their libido. Not the moves, but the “moves”.
At some point, Black women are going to have to step up and treat ourselves with respect. Draw the line somewhere. We can’t always find humor in being “slack”. We can’t always be the butt of the jokes. We need to take more pride in ourselves and how we’re respresented to our own and to those not in our communities.
I’m just sick and tired of us selling ourselves short. Now that’s real!
@DR, I agree with you. I do think that young girls don’t often realize how little real respect they get from young men when they act that way…
@Chicki, I do think these young women were imitating Beyonce and others. That’s why I put the pic with Beyonce and chair in the post…Beyonce is my girl, but is that ever appropriate in a public forum…I can’t believe I’m saying that but…
@Sandra Bell, that’s really sad…Wow! Thanks for sharing that tidbit!
@Katy, thanks for your input…we do live in an impure world…
@T-Mack, I think the teachers and administrators should have kept a tighter rein on the girls BEFORE this happened…
@Cristal, I feel you girl…I often wondered what was up when Beyonce was underage as well…
I am definitely feeling this post. As a cheerleader at BHS (Jackie you may remember this), we got in trouble for a “suggestive” dance my junior year . Mr. Gunn let us have it and we did NOTHING like what these girls did. However, I remember loving to wear my short skirt and silver tights to school on fridays before a game, I thought I was TOO cute, and many a boy told me so. And anytime I could shake my hips and make my skirt flounce was a good time. LOL But now as a 35 year old woman, I think we place to much value on sexuality as a form of power for women. When I first saw the video I was disturbed by the fact that the girls knew how to do these dances like experts. The “Cater to You” dance was different because Destiny’s Child were adults when they performed it. But teenage girls should not be performing sexually suggestive dances. It sends the wrong message to the boys that sex is all a woman is good for and to the girls that sex is the way to have boys (and men) give you attention. The adults supervising these girls have the most blame since they are supposed to protect and nurture the children. I don’t think we are hypocrites, just grown ups who have learned from our mistakes as teenagers.
@ Sylvia,
Well said, girl! Yes, I remember you as a cheerleader…those were the days…I guess we have grown up and now we see that many of the grown ups from back in the day were right 🙂 But you do know that Destiny’s Child came out when they were teenagers…
Yes they did, but the Cater 2 U song came out in 2005, and they were over 21 by then.
Is there a happy medium?
For many countries, the solution to this problem and all of the problems we mentioned above is “Islamic law”.
Interesting point dkwatts! I wonder what would be a happy medium? Perhaps, not including the chairs and boys…