Saturday 6 October 2007

Just A Quick Thought

Cardiff council are organising family pole dancing classes, open to kids as young as 11. Oh, it’s just clean fun they said in defence and went into some waffle about it keeping the kids fit.
Oh, really? Pole dancing developed in strip clubs - and here’s us trying not to overly sexualise the young. Is this the stuff an 11-year-old should be learning?
The council claims pole dancing teaches strength, coordination and agility. So does tap dancing - why not get them to learn that instead?

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

If they're not stripping, why turn on the puritanism?

Falling on a bruise said...

You would be happy to let 11 year old girls dance about in a sexually provocative manner?

Cody Bones said...

As the father of a 13 year old girl, my thoughts are as follows

ARE YOU FREAKIN NUTS. WHAT KIND OF MORON LETS HIS/HER DAUGHTER DO THAT.

End of Rant

Falling on a bruise said...

The morons at Cardiff Council it seems.

Joe the Troll said...

Think about it. Once it's taken out of context it doesn't have to be so much about gyrating. It's a matter of how it's taught, and this situation is hardly new.

Centuries ago, there were places where a new dance fad was banned because it required an obscene amount of contact between the sexes and people were becoming obsessed with it, doing it until they collapsed sometimes. This dance was called the waltz. And your aforementioned tap dancing, which is deader than Fred Astaire btw, was once something no good white people would allow their children to do. And Jazz dance? Do you think we're raising her to be some beatnik slut or something?

Yet jazz dance has grown to be accepted, and I doubt that if a new dance that is basically jazz-dance-with-a-pole is taught outside the context of stripping ( <- key phrase) and assuming that the parents that aren't raising strippers presently are still instilling those same values to their kids, I don't think this will contribute to rampant teen sluttery any more than sex education does.

In facy, Lucy, I think that if this were about sex ed. instead of a dance, you'd be among the very first to mock this way of thinking.

If strippers started tap dancing - and that would look really cool on some girls, I reckon - would that then make it off limits for the kids?

Paula said...

Yah, I don't care. Maybe we should get one -- I'm worried my girls haven't been getting enough exercise! Any kind of dancing is sexy. Well, maybe not square-dancing.

Falling on a bruise said...

Tap dancing was just the flippant opposite form of dancing of pole dancing that i could think of at the time.
To a child it probably is just dancing around a pole, to adults it has completely different conotations.
Pole dancing is sexually orientated and it may be moving out of the strip clubs and into the realms of fitness but can you see it being offered as an option in schools anytime soon? And do you think it would be acceptable if it was?

Falling on a bruise said...

Middle schools that is (8-11 year olds) or whatever your equivalent is named as it is the 11 years of age group invited by Cardiff Council to participate.

Anonymous said...

Like I said, whether it is sexualized or not is up to how it's taught. As I pointed out, parents have gotten past their preconceptions before.