little women?

Music: Trentemøller: The Last Resort (2006)

The latest viral video to garner national MSM attention features five eight- and nine-year-old girls, dressed in lingerie, dancing to Beyonce's "Single Ladies." Seeing it for the first time my jaw dropped, and then I laughed aloud. Then I watched it four more times. It's obvious from watching the routine that the choreography was deliberately provocative and designed to snap heads (its shock effects reminded me of the finale of Little Miss Sunshine, and I was similarly amused). The cheer-drawing effect of the routine is from the energetic, light-speed gyrating and grinding, the sort of stuff one expects from a racy adult strip-bar routine (which Beyonce herself promoted, albeit in more tasteful clothing). If you've not seen this yet, be prepared for a titillating experience. I daresay its almost NSFW:

[Later edit, 5/18: well, it didn't take long for the video to be pulled. The whole thing is something to behold; you can find some snippets of it, however, in the ABC news story.] The outcry on the InterTubes is that this is an age-inappropriate act because it sexualizes prepubescent girls. On television Dr. Phil went after the dance teachers for encouraging pedophiles. Last Friday the parents of a couple of the girls defended the routine as "normal" and "appropriate" within the world of competitive dance (this defense reminds me of Shanahara Gate). They defended the routine and outfits by arguing that the girls are oblivious to any sexual connotations that the routine or song might have, and that the outfits were designed for "movement." The father said it the girls' appearance was no different than children in bathing suits at the community pool.

I think Dr. Phil has a point---it's a pedophile's dream---but so, too, is a kid on a swing in a playground. The real issue here is the growing hypocrisy of denying adolescent sexuality while simultaneously celebrating its fact. Unquestionably children are moved by adult things with sexual themes without realizing that the feelings are "sexual." We learn the signifiers of sexuality as we get older and start applying them to our bodily excitations when society deems it appropriate. Freud's provocative and controversial thesis in 1905 is that we come out of the womb sexual creatures, capable of experiencing sexual stimulation and pleasure before we have the linguistic resources to make these bodily excitations meaningful. Of course, I don't mean "sexual" here in terms of adult intercourse (the feat that Freud mistakenly believed brings everything together), I simply mean bodily excitation. And one is hard pressed to think of an activity that pushes the body's buttons more than dance.

The controversy surrounding this video is a direct consequence of an overly narrow understanding of human sexuality and sexual response and, apparently, the limited repertoire we have for expressing the more intense feelings our body can have---the shear paucity of the signifier. On the one hand, we can argue that both the parents of the dancers and the outraged and concerned adults decrying the routine are simply in denial: human beings are sexual creatures, regardless of their age. We all stare and gape and are aroused by this dance routine because of its bodily/affective intensities. The girls dancing provocatively are similarly caught up in the sexual charge. On the other hand, however, one has to marvel at the rhetorical stupidity of the dancers' parents, as well as the dance teachers, who put this routine together. To say that children are sexual creatures is not to say that they should be allowed to express their natural, libidinal exuberance in a language that is only meaningful to adults. Children want to emulate adults; they learn by mimicry. So of course the girls want to dance this way; but they should also be taught what it signifies.

The stupidity of the routine is easily demonstrated with semiotic analysis: the Beyonce song, and very hot video associated with it, is about a break-up. The protagonist of the song is bragging about her sexual prowess and her body; she taunts "if you liked it then you should have put a ring on it," "it" meaning, of course, her body, the sexual experience, and so on. The Beyonce video features lots of sexually suggestive grinding. The "fun" of the song is really about the provocative payback: "if you really wanted to have sexual relations with me, you would have asked me to marry you." As we all know, the institution of marriage was originally an economic relationship concerning the property of the wife's body (not saying that’s what it is today, I'm just saying this is the basic history, and this is the logic the song plays off of). Yes, the song is catchy. But there's no way an eight year old girl could begin to comprehend the complexity of the lyrical message (even if it's done by Chipmunks). Regardless, the song is about the woman's body as property.

Where the routine gets irresponsible, however, is with the provocative grinding and the outfits. I think the grinding speaks for itself, but the lingerie is really "over the top." The outfits are designed to reveal as much skin as possible. And since when are knee-high black boots "normal" for eight year old girls (and there's quite a power-play signified by those!)??? Further, the "hot pants" and halters are black and red in color---classic colors of early 20th century U.S. burlesque. Now, I don't know the history of burlesque fashion, but I would be willing to bet the black and red color can be traced to prostitution---I just don't know. Most of us would agree, however, black and red underwear is a signifier of salacious interest---that is to say, the promise (or withholding) of genital intercourse.

With this dance routine, then, we have a wildly overdetermined adult sexuality. It's one thing to admit children are sexual creatures; it's quite another to have them dripping in all the signifiers of adult sex and then to claim that it's "innocent fun." These children were deliberately sexualized in adult connotation for a sense of enjoyment; it's the same logic of the Hit Girl character in the comic and film Kick-Ass (however, the film was much more responsible).

Gosh knows I'm no prude, and I do not side with Dr. Phil or the outraged parents decrying the dance routine either. All the adults involved in putting the girls into this situation---pro and con---need to take responsibility for their projections and enjoyments here. Human beings are sexual creatures whose bodies are excited by being with, and by looking at, other bodies, regardless of age. That said, how we make meaning of these excitations is clearly in the moral domain---and it's a very complicated domain shot-through with all sorts of consequences, political, moral, and economic. If parents want to dress up their prepubescent kids in lingerie and have them parade about, grinding their wares and evoking the economic dimensions of marriage, then they should be prepared to talk to them about human sexual response. The problem, of course, is that none of these girls have been talked to about their sexuality. The problem is now these five girls are confused about the controversy: why are all these people upset with us? What did we do wrong? And frankly, I don't think an eight year old is ready to deal with the complexities (and hypocrisies) of sexuality in the United States. Perhaps some of them are---everyone's different.

In short: the dance teachers and parents have introduced these girls to the vexed and often pathological discourses of shame. Ours is not a culture that is ready to confront the sexuality of young people. And because that's the social context in which this dance routine has intervened, I suspect a lot of young girls who identify with the feelings but not the meanings are asking themselves, "what's wrong with me?" That's the rub. And that's a shame.