I won’t “freak,” don’t ask me

[Originally posted on goofyblog 1.11.07]

High schools across the country are banning the current dance styles of youth. One style is freaking others are booty dancing and dancerbating.

“I saw way too much of some of our young girls,” [Principal Charles] Salter [of Aliso Niguel High School in SoCal] said in his e-mail. “Why do girls have to have themselves so exposed? Why are they wearing garters? Why do they have to have cleavage displayed so overtly and slits high up their thighs and then allow the boys (to) dance (and rub) up against them?
“This can happen no more … we need to slow this train down.”

Meanwhile, Nick Van Hoffman has gotten his pantyhose in a bundle over it with a column decrying some of these developments:

Thus do the wee ones from seventh and eighth grade on entertain themselves when not prevented by school administrators, though their prohibitions are not for long, as Steven L. Smith of Rochester, N.Y., explains when he writes into the Urban Dictionary to announce: “My high school banned nuts to butts dancing, but we can do it in college.”

And we’re sure you can, Mr. Smith.

Add alcohol and drugs to the mix of sex and sensuality. The newest surveys tell us illegal drug taking by the young is down but by no means out. As for booze, 40 percent of ninth graders, girls and boys both, drink; 20 percent are binge drinkers. Teacher chaperones at teenage parties have begun to use some kind of electronic wand that they can wave over the heads of the grind-dancers to reveal who has been drinking. The gadget itself is less important than its having been invented and rushed into use. For those who have never been under the influence of alcohol, those who have will tell those who have not that in America, at least, consuming alcohol enhances the urge to grind, booty-dance or whatever, on and off the dance floor.

When I was in London in early 2001, this topic was treated for laughs on a show I saw on the tellie. A middle-aged narrator visited a high school formal with those digicams that work under low light. UK television doesn’t have the censorship that we enjoy here in the States (meaning they can say fuck and they can show full-frontal nudity) so it was eye-opening what passed for “dancing” at that affair. The narrator just laughed it off, attributing it to “kids will be kids.”

And really that’s all there is to it. Each generation takes it just one step further. Viva progress!