Dance of the Sugar Plum Sluts...

These girls are 9

So there I was... watching the baby sluts dance...  It was not, as might be inferred, the END OF DAYS - nope, that wasn't it.  Dance competition season had begun.  The last time I endured this was 5 years ago, when Rissa did a couple of group numbers at the age of 9.

I thought we were safe, this time around, I really did.  I told David, who came late to the party, that this year the dancers were mostly wearing clothes and weren't too slutty.

Hubris.  That's what it was.

No sooner had we sat down in the theatre (waiting for Rissa's group to dance), when pint-sized hip-hoppers clad in next to no clothing, all began shaking their little asses to the delight of their parents.  At least, I'm hoping it was their parents who, when these delightful little divas started doing the ass popping move, hooted hollered and cat called.  I hope to God that it wasn't some random pedophiles off the street who thought they'd found their own personal Heaven.  (Media Alert: ANYBODY can walk into a dance competition.) The booty-poppers were in the mini class - which means that they were 5 - or younger.  David and I shared looks of horror.  These wee little bits of spandex and sequins danced with this subtext:

"Hey, look at us grind our little asses!  See us shake our non-existent boobs!  We are A-D-O-R-A-B-L-E!!  Doesn't it just make you want to..."

"I swear to you," I said.  "This is the first that I've seen of it at the competition."

"My eyes!" David said.  "I need to bleach my eyes!!"

Then the Irish Step Dancers came out.  They were 15. Their costume: barely there, sparkly mid-torso shirts missing an arm, leatherette booty shorts and, wait for it... fishnet stockings with a seam up the back.  'Cause you know... that's what Irish dancing is all about.  Sex.  The fishnet stockings are there, I guess, because they were fishing.  Fishing for... sailors.   The girls were fabulous dancers - very precise, synchronized beautifully... and all I could think was "WHY ARE THEY DRESSED LIKE STRIPPERS?"  David turned his head so violently to avoid looking at them (and going straight to hell), that he almost broke his neck.

Dance schools have dress codes.  Really fricking serious dress codes.  You have to 'bunnify', you have to be covered, no jewelery, you can't look sloppy.  At least not until it's competition season and then apparently you're allowed to look like a $25 hooker who gives blow jobs in the drive-thru of an all-night Tim Hortons.

It can't just be us, can it?  Please God, tell me that David and I aren't the only parents who don't want our daughter graphically sexualized!  Rissa's 13, and if I discovered her doing the choreography that some of these 7 year olds were doing?  I'd be bringing up the dance studio on child pornography charges.  Over the weekend, I watched young girls performing to these songs:

I'm a Good Girl - A jazz solo by a sassy little 13 year old who basically did a burlesque number. Don't get me wrong - I love a good burlesque number - LOVE them - hell, I'd love to do one myself.  What I don't love?  Is watching a 13 year old offer her boobs up to the audience as something akin to the dessert section at all-you-can-eat buffet.

Put Your Grafitti On Me danced to by a group of 10 year olds in sequined bras and panties, splaying their fingers all over their bodies - basically indicating where they'd like their full-body bukkake.

The topper?   Flaunt - danced to by a  trio of 13 year olds who did a lot of gesturing to their own tatas and hoohas before they finished the number off by grinding their asses.  The lyrics of this song are:

Don’t you, don’t you wanna wanna
Don’t you, don’t you wanna wanna
Don’t you, don’t you wanna see me flaunt what I got?
Baby, come a little closer
Come and get to know me
And what I got?
Baby, won’t you come and see me?
Won’t you come and be with me?
See what I got
‘Cause what I got is what you need
What I got is what you need
What I got is what you need
It’s what you need
It’s what you need, so
Don’t you, don’t you wanna wanna
Don’t you, don’t you wanna wanna
Don’t you, don’t you wanna see me flaunt what I got?

"NO!  NO, I DON'T!!!  You're 13!  WHERE ARE YOUR PARENTS??  Put on some fucking clothes!"

I'm not a prude.  Read my posts about sex, you'll see.  I love sex.  I read tonnes of erotica, I enjoy off-colour smut.  Have done, since I was a young adult.  My daughter is 13.  I am not comfortable with her being thought of as a sex object.  I don't want her to become accustomed to receiving applause for popping her booty.  I don't want her to think that being clad in next to nothing in public doesn't have consequences.   Yes, in a perfect world, we should all be able to run around naked and nothing would happen.  Yes, the human body is just skin with hills and valleys defining our primary and secondary sexual organs.  It shouldn't cause such riot.  But it does.  We can pretend that the world has changed, but it hasn't. For millennia men have been schooled to believe that women's clothing and behaviour can warrant a Get Out of Jail Free card...  Yes, it's 2014, and yes, it's still happening.

So how about this?  Let's just encourage our children to... dance.  In clothing that allows them to move without sharing their asses with the world;  to music that empowers rather than subjugates.  Can we please be vigilant parents, protecting our precious progeny - allowing them the time to grow up?  'Cause here's the hard truth folks:  Your little girl, who used to skip around the dance studio in innocent abandon, pretending to be a butterfly?  That little girl, when she dances all 'grown up', is going to have random strangers in a crowded theatre wanting to fuck her. And if you're cool with that?  You need to re-examine what it means to be a parent.