This one scores high on the "ow...my eyes" meter.

Oooooooookay.

I'm a little late to the game on this one, but important stuff like Shia interviews bumped this back a few days.....anyway - read about these little dancing queens last week and expected it was another case of over-reactive judgment. And, as I'm particularly difficult to offend, I was getting ready to prepare another "oh, chill out already" rebuttal along the lines of my recent defense of both Miley and Shia.

And then I actually watched the video.

Here's the situation in a nutshell:

7, 8 and 9 year-old girls in a big, fancy, dance competition staged a routine to Beyonce's "Single Ladies" tune. They wore teeeeeeny tiny little costumes that involved naked bellies and knee-high boots and frilly little lace numbers masquerading as "shorts." Oh dear, right there.

And then I watched them dance.

Watched them shake little boobs they don't have.

Watched them, um, essentially "caress" themselves in ways they don't understand.

Watched them fling their arms and legs and non-existant busts and hips and what-nots around in ways they should not.

It was -- frankly -- enough to make any full-grown adult feel dirty for even having watched it. Oh, I felt dirty.

And horrified.

And -- for once -- absolutely believe any parent who dismisses this as "just a dance" perhaps needs to unplug themselves from the Jon Benet network and very quickly throw some big, fluffy bathrobes over these girls and teach them some nice little ballet moves, instead.

I'm serious.

I'm no prude - in fact, I'm the first to say "girls will be girls" and remind us that we all put on high heels and mom's makeup and maybe even giggled over stuffing little bras with kleenex and feeling grown up from time to time. Our Barbies figured out how to make out with Ken under our watchful care long before we actually entertained the idea of kissing real boys ourselves.

BUT - I read this rather flip dismissal of the dancing girls and think "you're kidding, right?"

"These girls are wildly talented dancers. Their costumes are no worse than a two peice bathing suit. To interpret this sexually is disgusting. It shows how bad our world has become, that we think of seven year olds as sexy. These girls are doing nothing more than showing off their amazing dancing abilities, and they should not be punished for it."


Back that up for a second, please? It's NOT sexy. That's what's horrifying. The kids aren't sexy, they're sexualized - it's creepy. AND - there's pretty much no way these girls came up with that routine on their own. It had to have been choreographed, rehearsed, and approved by adults. There's no way this was orchestrated without some sort of adult involvement. And THAT is where this gets so creepy. We're not "creating" something sexual out of nothing - we're watching something that was created to be exploitive.

Of COURSE the girls are just out there to dance their hearts out and win a competition.

Of COURSE they're just having fun - and while they're at it, there are some grown-ups out there that sanctioned the boob-shaking, hip-thrusting dance moves of EIGHT year-olds.

Seven, eight, nine years old....tiny little elementary school kids. Not ten, twelve, fourteen (though I'd still go out on a limb and call that too young for some of the moves these tweaked out second graders managed). At about the 1:47 mark there's the part that strikes me as the creepiest, or most pole-dance-esque move.

That these kids are talented ISN'T in dispute. Yep, they're definitely talented - but why exploit talented little kids by allowing them to emulate "stuff" about which they should still be blissfully ignorant. Because it doesn't cut it to say, "they're young, they don't understand what that means, they're just dancing." Fine - then, as these kids' parents, I'd be seriously disturbed to watch my kid do something "she doesn't understand" when it's as grossly inappropriate as what these girls managed.

It was the entire package - the outfits, the song choice, the choreography - we SHOULD be disturbed to watch that. Parents should want to protect their kids from that sort of exploitation. We shouldn't just write it off as "just kids dancing," because - at eight years old, they're not old enough to make that call on their own.

Ok - stepping off of soapbox.

Over and out.

*Shudder. Ugh.*