Pink sequined tutus: The gendering of dance

Originally posted at The Feminist Anthropologist. 

This past weekend was the first time in fifteen years or so that I have been in the audience of a dance performance. I have been a dancer since I could walk, though I have always had a frayed relationship with the activity that demanded so much of my time and energy. Dance culture became something I couldn’t quite understand, especially as I began identifying as a feminist as a teenager. Though I loved the creative power that flowed through my body to music, dance often demanded too much attention to my body and how it was supposed to look.

Over the weekend, I watched my two younger sisters perform in a show that included girls (and few boys) ranging from age three to adult. The theme of this performance was “A Day At The Mall,” so many of the songs boasted very gendered and class-based messages, from “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend” to Madonna’s “Material Girl”. My younger sister performed in a number to the song from the movie Clueless, Supermodel, which sings, “because I’m young and I’m hip and so beautiful/I’m gonna be a supermodel” and the more troubling lyrics, “I didn’t eat yesterday/and I’m not going eat today/And I’m not going eat tomorrow/Cause I’m gonna be a supermodel”. Even I cannot tell whether or not this song is making fun of itself, but regardless, these are the shallow messages that preteen and young teenage girls were dancing to. A very young group of girls danced to a song “Accessory,” where the artist Jordyn Taylor sings about how her boyfriend is her “latest accessory” and that she wants to carry him around to show him off. A bunch of very young girls danced to the dance performance classic “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend,” which sings “Men grow cold/As girls grow old/And we all lose our charms in the end…”

The youngest group of girls in this show danced to a song by Barbie’s character from her 2010 movie Barbie: A Fashion Fairytale. The song, “Get Your Sparkle On,” features lyrics like “Which pink?/Decisions, decisions…” and “Get your sparkle on/Show this world where you belong…”. The song has the sugar-coated feel of 90’s faux-Girl Power messages from Barbie and The Spice Girls, which taught us to celebrate our girlhood in all its sexualized pinkness.

As I watched this show with my mother, she expressed distaste at a very young group of girls (probably around six years old) dancing to the classic 90s song “Barbie Girl,” which includes lyrics like “…you can brush my hair/undress me everywhere…” and “Make me walk, make me talk, do whatever you please/I can act like a star, I can beg on my knees…”. While the song was actually one of those Kidz Bop or equivalent versions which edited out the word “bimbo” that is prominent in the original song by Aqua, these questionable messages were still included. The song is obviously sexually-charged and sexist, as Barbie sings about the sexual things Ken is allowed to do to her body in exchange for his promise of forever: “You can touch, you can play, if you say: I’m always yours.”

We agreed that this song in particular was probably not the best choice for this age group, but my mom felt that Barbie Girl was the most distasteful and that she would not want my or my sisters performing in that number when we were that age. Though I agreed with her concern, my mom’s opinion highlighted the problem with our concern for the “sexualization of children” but not the explicit gendering of childhood. This reminded me of the very brilliant post by Laura Woodhouse over at The F Word UK blog about our concern for the sexualization of children. Woodhouse writes:

The cultural message being pushed on our kids and young people right now through the marketing of a very narrow brand of adult sexiness isn’t “Have sex, it’s great!”, it’s “If you’re a girl, you should be displaying and using your body to sexually please men – that’s what makes you female!” and, to a lesser extent, “If you’re a boy, you should be demanding and getting sexual attention from girls – that’s what makes you male!”

The problem isn’t sex: it’s sexism. And heterocentrism, transphobia and homophobia. All mixed up with a heavy dollop of capitalism. That’s not a problem you deal with by restricting children’s access to sex education and teaching them to “just say no.”

While many mothers of young dancers often express displeasure with little girl’s dance costumes that seem “too sexy” or show too much skin, this is often false concern. Though there is plenty to be said about deciding what is age appropriate, we should be less concerned that these dance costumes and songs encourage young girls to be aware of their sexuality and more concerned with how they dictate what it means to be a girl, how we are allowed to be “sexy,” and how we are supposed to perform our gender identity. For me, “A Day At The Mall” included just too much of the former. It defined that femaleness means loving shopping, pink glitter, having a hot boyfriend who buys you diamonds.

I know that a common response to this kind of nit-picky media analysis is that these things are “harmless” and that little kids don’t even listen to the lyrics. And as a participant in this very girly dance world for a large portion of my life, I can’t stand up and condemn it outright. Dancing and performing on stage has given me my self-confidence, fearlessness, and desire to show the world what I’ve got, even if it isn’t perfect. However, the collective message that the songs and themes in a dance show about going to the mall teaches is troublesome to me. I don’t wish to offend the dancers and dance teachers that I know by writing this–I only wish to call attention to the themes that dance songs often follow and the ways that they can teach young girls very specific and problematic messages about girlhood. Though we are often cautious about having swear words in the songs we dance to, I’d honestly rather have a bunch of three year olds hear “fuck” everyday than have them hear about starving yourself to become a beautiful supermodel.