I’ve been thinking a lot about the recent controversy concerning the seven-year old girls who performed a highly skilled dance to Beyonce’s “Single Ladies.” on You Tube (http://www.youtube.com/user/kyubiboy2522#p/a/u/0/tnTyvqYT3Y8). The posting from the World of Dance Competition received several hundred thousand views and comments.
Here’s what some of them said:

“Parental stupidity and hyper sexualization gone crazy”

“The outfits are revealing enough that grown ups could be arrested for indecent exposure or soliciting prostitution, depending on location.”

“This hyper-sexualization of young women is linked to three of their most common mental health complaints: eating disorders, depression, and low self-esteem. “

The discussion made it to the ladies on ABC’s, The View who debated whether the parent’s were irresponsible to allow their daughter’s to wear revealing clothing and to dance with “the open leg movements.” (Joy Behar).

The whole thing strikes very close to home with me as my own daughters perform all too similar dances in competitive forums as well. Recently, I sat in an audience as my own eleven year old daughter, half-clad in bright metallic red, crawled beneath the legs of several other young dancers. She emerged front and center, batted her thick black false lashes, paused, and then spun her body with precision, rhythm, and drama to Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance.”

Later, my fourteen year-old daughter’s legs emerged out of fake snow on the stage floor to the music lyrics: “hot as ice, cold as fire.” Her costume? Silver “booty shorts,” silver-sequins halter top, fake eye-lashes.

There are much younger girls too. Nine-year olds in shiny black short skirts with high boots high-kicked to “It’s Raining Men.” Six and seven-year olds in hot-pink halter tops and “booty shorts” with fake lashes and red lipstick shook and leapt to Madonna.

Is it wrong? Risque? Too out there for young girls? Is it, like the You Tube commentators protest, “too overtly sexual for young girls?” I would argue that it is the critics that are wrong.

I watched the You Tube video and could not help but admire the skill of the young girls’ dance routine. At only seven or eight years of age, these girls are performing at a level that many adults can never achieve. Their costumes revealed their mid-sections, but how are they skimpier than a bathing suit? Dance is a sport for which body conscious clothing has always been acceptable. Ballet dancers (male and female) have been wearing next to nothing for several decades.

Certainly, there are many other sports for which body conscious clothing is considered uniform: men and women’s figure skating and gymnastics are two that come to mind. Men’s wrestling shows a young man’s form, as does men’s competitive swimming.

And what about the “provocative gyrations?” Dance itself, an ageless art, is about the movement of the body. One simply cannot achieve the art and sport of dance without moving body parts. Ballet, jazz, lyrical, contemporary, tap, modern, and hip hop are all forms of dance– each with it’s own interpretation of movement, and each necessitating movement of various body parts. The young girls in the You Tube video moved their parts quite well and achieved beautiful dance results. Period.

The vociferous opponents of the young You Tube dancers and their parents are also missing the bigger picture: this is good for the kids! Our girls spend many hours taking dance classes after school and on weekends to perfect their skills. There are even more hours rehearsing and performing on weekends in shows and dance competitions with their mostly female peers.

The excessive exercise keeps them fit, regimented and happily, too busy to hang out at the malls or spend much time surfing the web. Translation: dance, like many sports, keeps young people out of trouble. Most of their time is spent hanging out with other young girls.

When the dance competition is over, the girls clean off the makeup, put away the shiny silvery shorts and pull on their denim and sweats. (Spoiler alert: costumes are just costumes; the princesses at Disney World are not real either).

After all, in the end, our daughters know that what they are doing is putting on a performance and accomplishing their sport. My recommendations to the critics: find something to keep yourselves occupied and happy too. Or, sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. And, please, shut up.