Middle School Girls Gone Wild

New York Times ^ | 29 December 2006 | LAWRENCE DOWNES

[shrinkermd]

It’s hard to write this without sounding like a prig. But it’s just as hard to erase the images that planted the idea for this essay, so here goes. The scene is a middle school auditorium, where girls in teams of three or four are bopping to pop songs at a student talent show. Not bopping, actually, but doing elaborately choreographed re-creations of music videos, in tiny skirts or tight shorts, with bare bellies, rouged cheeks and glittery eyes.

They writhe and strut, shake their bottoms, splay their legs, thrust their chests out and in and out again. Some straddle empty chairs, like lap dancers without laps. They don’t smile much. Their faces are locked from grim exertion, from all that leaping up and lying down without poles to hold onto. “Don’t stop don’t stop,” sings Janet Jackson, all whispery. “Jerk it like you’re making it choke. ...Ohh. I’m so stimulated. Feel so X-rated.” The girls spend a lot of time lying on the floor. They are in the sixth, seventh and eighth grades.

As each routine ends, parents and siblings cheer, whistle and applaud. I just sit there, not fully comprehending. It’s my first suburban Long Island middle school talent show. I’m with my daughter, who is 10 and hadn’t warned me. I’m not sure what I had expected, but it wasn’t this. It was something different. Something younger. Something that didn’t make the girls look so ... one-dimensional.

It would be easy to chalk it up to adolescent rebellion, an ancient and necessary phenomenon, except these girls were barely adolescents and they had nothing to rebel against. This was an official function at a public school, a milieu that in another time or universe might have seen children singing folk ballads, say, or reciting the Gettysburg Address.

[Moonmad27]

It would be ironic, except that he wasn't homosexual.

[philo]

The actor who played "Ward" was homosexual. Holy irony Batman. Uh , you sure about that? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Beaumont_%28actor%29

[BlueAngel]

He is thinking of the Brady Bunch father. I hate it when freepers post things as fact and get it wrong.

[donmeaker]

Thanks for the correction.

My only excuse is I must have confused two Hugh Beaumonts: The Hugh Beaumont who was a homosexual was the British producer, 1908 to 1973.

Hugh Beaumont the American Actor was a Methodist minister, Christmass tree farmer, and died in 1982.

Again, sorry to be so darn wrong, and thanks for the correction.

[Monterrosa-24]

Classical ballet has skimpy outfits but classical ballet is discipline, high beauty, high athleticism, and grace. This grinding hip dancing sounds like it would be rather ugly and tacky even if the outfits covered everything twice.

[DustyMoment]

Usually on threads like this, we have one or two freepers who say "I graduated High School in the 1950's, and believe me this is nothing new ... I remember all the girls in 6th grade dancing like this to Buddy Holly."

Ummmmmm . . . . . . . I graduated High School in the 1960's, and believe me this is very new - girls in high school, junior high school and elementary school didn't do ANYTHING like this in those days. There were standards, rules, religion and behavioral mores in those days that simply no longer exist, anymore.

If parents are wondering why their pre-teen daughters dress, look and act like sluts, this article might give them a clue!!

[DustyMoment]

Usually on threads like this, we have one or two freepers who say "I graduated High School in the 1950's, and believe me this is nothing new ... I remember all the girls in 6th grade dancing like this to Buddy Holly."

Ummmmmm . . . . . . . I graduated High School in the 1960's, and believe me this is very new - girls in high school, junior high school and elementary school didn't do ANYTHING like this in those days. There were standards, rules, religion and behavioral mores in those days that simply no longer exist, anymore.

If parents are wondering why their pre-teen daughters dress, look and act like sluts, this article might give them a clue!!

[jordan8]

It’s hard to write this without sounding like a prig

Wouldn't want to sound PARENTAL and adult, would we? Blame the pimps at MTV, this is its audience, though it pretends it's aimed at college students. An MTV exec bragged years ago that they owned the 12 year old audience. And everything they do is carefully calculated.

[bannie]

They'll look like this:

Just paint a target on them for all of the perverts in the world.

[NonValueAdded]

The problem is real and sobering, but your photo and caption combination is priceless.

[I see my hands]

I think this Little Miss Sunshine will do just fine.

[StockAyatollah]

June Cleaver: Ward, weren't you a little hard on the beaver last night?

[llevrok]

I must have confused two Hugh Beaumonts:

One was fond of a little Beaver and the other not.

[SuziQ]

Could you imagine being Britney Spear's parents. I'd be so ashamed, I'd disown her.

Yeah, well, that's the problem. Her mother is her biggest booster!
One problem with the little girls these days is that their mothers want to be their friends, so they don't want to tell them no, if the girls ask for the slut wear, or even worse, they encourage the girls to wear those clothes because they want their girls to be considered cool. Unfortunately, I think they're living their teen years over again, vicariously, through their daughters.

[kcvl]

I just GOOGLED Janet Jackson's 'song'


Song Name: All Nite (Don't Stop)

[Chorus]
Work it like you're working a pole
Shake it 'til you're shaking the floor

Pop it like you're poppin' a cork
Don't Stop, Don't Stop
Jerk it like you're making it choke
Break it like you're breakin' a code
Drop it till you're taking it lower

Drop it, drop it...

This is serious
I'm delirious
So oblivious
I could dance all night

With you
As long as its funky
This rhythm just makes me high
I'm like a junkie
I could dance all night

[Chorus]

So intoxicated
I'm so stimulated
Fell so X-rated
I could dance all night

As long as it's funky
This rhythm just makes me high
I'm like a junkie
I could dance all night

[Chorus]

[Bridge]
Everybody on the floor (Let's go)
Let's get hardcore (Get low)
Make my sweat pour (Oh no)
Don't stop (Gimme some more)
Ooh my body's yours (spank that)
Spank that back door (like that)
Drive me like a Porsche' (yea)

I could dance all night

Can we take this party higher?

Now just put your hands to the sky and

Clap, clap, clap, clap

I could dance all night

[Chorus (repeat)]

[Repeat Chorus]



PUKE!

Thank you Jackson 'family'. /sarcasm

[The_Reader_David]

The phenomenon documented is loathsome and a sign of grevious decay in our culture. That being said,

". . .these girls were barely adolescents and they had nothing to rebel against."

suggests that the author of the piece is so divorced from adolescence that he or she (I didn't read the byline) is clueless: adolescent rebellion is never against anything discernable to adults. The rebels always have everything perfect (witness the pampered suburban upbringings of the quintessential adolescent rebels--the baby boomers, or for that matter the fact that adolescent rebellion in the 'flapper' generation of the 1920's was largely a phenomenon of the well-off). The 'barely adolescents' also shows lack of memory: the sixth, seventh and eighth graders of the 60's wanted to be campus radicals, too.

[hosepipe]

[ These girls can parade around dressed like prostitutes and then they blame the BOYS for getting aroused! ]

RAPE is not an option if even the girls were stark nekid bumping and grinding.. no matter the age of the raper.. and even a teenager would not do it unless he would do it ANYWAY..

[RonF]

So, one early September day I went into the local Middle School in the morning to fill out a Building Utilization form so the Scout Troop can meet there. Outside the front of the building there was what looked like about a 6th or 7th grade girl holding forth. She was obviously the dominant girl of the group. She was dressed in a shirt that stopped above her navel and a skirt that started well below it but didn't go down very far.

I walked into the office. The school administrator and one of the teachers were standing there. I told them about the young girl and told them that she looked like a whore in training. The Assistant Principal was in the next room and came out to tell me that he agreed with me. I asked him what the parents could possibly be thinking in sending their child to school dressed like that. He pointed out that a) parents tend to let kids pick out their own clothes, even to the point of turning the kids loose in a mall with the parents' credit card, and b) it is often difficult to find decent clothing in the mall stores.

[pissant]

Liberals.