Dancing season is rapidly coming to close. Not a moment too soon, I must heartily add, as I will miss nothing about the hot chaotic mess that is hosting a Dance Festival. Children running, crying, scurrying about, being chased by frazzled Moms – all to the backdrop of shitty canned music and the omnipresent sickly smell of too much hairspray. One can feel the anxiety in the air as troops of children are herded about for their stiltedly choreographed time on stage. So many shades of awesome; but not the reason for this post today. Today we look at the larger issue of the replication of the patriarchal beauty standard via the innocuous vehicle known as the teen Dance Festival.
Daughter Crying while being attended to by Mom.
I see this happening multiple times during the festivals I work. A distraught daughter being made up by her Mom in preparation for some sort of dance routine that will be judged and graded during said competition. Young girls being preened and made up to look like something they are not. Not all, as in the above picture, are really that into the entire process. Yet, the show and the make-up must go on. They are groomed into dancer approved appearances like this:
Step 1
Or this:
Step 2
The question I have is this – how important a quality is ‘sexy’ for female dancers? The pictures provided certainly seem to prioritize a certain look: Lithe, heavily made up, and much skin showing. Does this standard apply to all dance? Of course not, but in dance festival land as I’ve seen, step 2 could be considered the norm.
Against the backdrop of our societies standards, “step 2” can send a ruinous message to girls/women about how they should look to be successful in their personal pursuits and society in general.
How did dancing get to be like this? We need only to look at the standards set by society in general for women.
Errr…yah.
The cultural transmission of these toxic norms is carried across generations – the norms ingrained on the mother are inscribed onto the daughter as she grows up and looks to her mother to help cope with being female in our society. So, the in the dance festivals I observe, I can see this transmission of patriarchal norms in action. Small children are plucked and primped, made to wear revealing clothing and generally forced to embody what is considered to be ‘sexy’ as per the male-gaze. This process is only made possible with the cooperation and willingness of older women to groom their children into what has been deemed as an acceptable female pursuit by society. It is a vicious cycle that needs to be examine more and unpacked to find ways in which dancing can be made less of a grooming tool of the patriarchy and more of an actively fun pursuit for children who want to express themselves in a venerated art-form.
Let it be said that I am not against the art of dancing, but rather, the poisonous patriarchal outer shell, that has encased much of the art-form within its clutches.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
7 comments
June 4, 2015 at 7:19 am
robert browning
I guess it’s procreation at work; stereotypes that most just go along with.
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June 4, 2015 at 7:42 am
john zande
Organised dance has always baffled me. Dance if you feel like it. Dance when you’re happy. Dance when the music demands you dance. Forcing it seems so silly.
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June 4, 2015 at 12:32 pm
The Arbourist
@JZ
The dancing route at the moment is fraught with much nonsense. I’d like to see more options without all the crappy norms piled on top for girls and boys because right now it seems like we are in the Halloween costume zone where anything female is preceded by “sexy” – sexy nurse, fire-fighter, business executive…
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June 4, 2015 at 12:34 pm
The Arbourist
@robert browning
I hope you’re not espousing this as some sort of biologically destined feature. Also, considering how young these girls are, why would procreation be foregrounded in your argument?
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June 5, 2015 at 3:48 am
Reneta Scian
Patriarchal norms work in both directions as far as dancing goes. Because classically, men are taught to lead, and made to believe that their decisions in dance are what guide the women. No where in there, inside those traditions, is there exception or inclusion for women to play lead, or to dance or dress in a way that diverges from the cultural norm. Further, while we don’t have much in the way of dance festivals in the US, we do have the obligatory social exchanges of seasonal, and schooling related balls and dances. And classically speaking, these venues strictly police gender norms, and sometimes even practice overt racism in their initiation. And what’s worse, is that our children, even high school students are our most impressionable people. When we teach them this, we’re instilling in them feelings that will affect them for not just their adolescences but for their entire lives in profound ways. And unfortunately, those ways are seldom healthy exchanges for either party, but especially for women, disabled people, GLBT people, and anyone outside of the accepted and privileged norm.
Those seemingly passive messages we send about gender, race, and entitlements are purveyed and proliferated via our traditions and by a fundamental unwillingness to allow those traditions to continue, but in a way that is actually healthy and acceptable for equality and human nature. Rather than being “Harmless Tradition”, it’s anything but, in that it perpetuates harmful gender stereotypes that privileges some people, and disadvantages others. School dances are notably guilty of this in the US, and to our especially susceptible teenagers who are the future voices and generations that will support or fight back against oppression. And it’s no wonder why, when considering that, that our school dances are often the battle grounds of choice for many ultra-conservatives and religious fundamentalists. Any time a gay or trans person tries to assert the unfairness of the ritual they jump in to “Put us back in our places”, so that a more open and accepting cultural value can not be transmitted to their children, to whom they are trying to teach their hateful traditions.
There is a stark difference from trying to convey your personal values to your children, and trying to insure that the same values are conveyed to all children and teens. This can also be seen as another attempt to use religious freedom to force beliefs upon other people, in those cases as well. They are usually the ones unwilling to “Break with Tradition”, and allow men to wear dresses and make up, and women to wear tuxes.
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June 6, 2015 at 10:24 am
VR Kaine
Totally sick and demented. Hats off to the “Jackass” crew for making such a mockery of those pageants as they did. To me it starts and stops w the parents, though, mothers and fathers alike – projecting and deflecting their issues onto their kids. They don’t deserve kids in the first place.
The Dr. Phil episode on those pageants is an eye-opener, too.
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June 6, 2015 at 3:18 pm
Sedate Me
“This process is only made possible with the cooperation and willingness of older women to groom their children into what has been deemed as an acceptable female pursuit by society.”
Huzzah! I’m far from an avid reader of Fem-Lit, but rarely have I seen such properly attributed blame.
For decades, I watched “men’s magazines” get all the blame. It’s as if young women were lined up around the block to buy copies of Hustler & Swank, so that they could re-engineer themselves to fit the sexual tastes of men. (Spoiler Alert! boobs, vagina, pulse)
It was laughable. The reality is that women’s magazines have 100,000+ times more negative impact on women. And they’re getting worse. Few models look anything like their pictures without professional hair, makeup, lighting, etc. Thanks to technology, some of the women in these pictures barely look human anymore. For all we know, that’s a 1970’s male Olympian under all those special effects. But all that matters is the end…product! Cause that’s what it is, a product to mindlessly buy into.
Peer groups are by FAR the most effective way to transmit cultural values, especially negative ones. Why do you think politicos dress in plaid shirts & roll up their sleeves during photo-ops with commoners? Why do you think Madison Ave’s bread & butter is (aspirational) peer group advertising? In other words, “These are your peers (or a peer group you wish you belonged to) Here’s the shit they buy. If you want to belong, you should buy that shit too!”
Messages women (or media aimed at women) pass on to women are the most dangerous of all. Nearly every media product for women I’m familiar with promotes one thing, competitive conformity. A woman’s life is an unending competition to best conform to whatever styles/behaviours that have been determined to be acceptable. In most cases, it boils down to being just “sexy enough” to work on men without “being a slut”. And the worst crime of all is to be old, aka “out of date”. And needless to say, somewhere in every media message is “Buy this product”.
Similarly, the current obsession with Pedophile Dance Theatres, competitive dress buying, prom parades, greased bachelor catching, celeb trends and whatever other completely meaningless shit women are expected to be interested in. Most of this crap is meant to reinforce…hell…I wouldn’t even call them sexual “norms” anymore. I don’t see how anyone can see it as anything BUT dangerously dysfunctional.
They’ve got girls who won’t even see their first period in 5-10 years looking & acting like crack-whores! Unless their horrible parents allow them access to the Internet, they’ll have NO clue what sex is, but they’re primed & ready to work that “sexy magic” anyway! Because using sex to manipulate men is how you get what you want, girls, and don’t you forget it!
Disgusting! It’s arguably worse now than during the period represented in early Mad Men episodes.
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