fayfreethinkers.com

Teens' Dancing Is Freaking Out the Adults

Some educators, disgusted by what they see as 'simulated sex,' are banning it at school functions. Others say to relax -- it's just this generation's 'flirtation.'

By Seema Mehta, Times Staff Writer
October 17, 2006

The grainy high school dance video is lurid.

A teenage boy dances behind his winter-formal date, hands on her hips, thrusting his pelvis against her while she hitches up her satiny gown and bends at the waist. Another couple dance facing each other, their bodies enmeshed and their hips gyrating in a frenzy. A boy approaches a third couple, nearly sandwiching the girl between himself and her partner.

Teenagers call it "freaking," a style of dance made popular on MTV. Educators call it "simulated sex" that has no place at school dances. This clash between outraged adults and sexualized teens is being played out at homecoming dances, winter formals and proms across the nation, most recently at Aliso Niguel High School in Aliso Viejo.

After a jungle-themed dance in September, Principal Charles Salter canceled all future dances until students, parents and administrators craft a plan to stop freak dancing.

For months he'd implored parents to get their children to stop freaking, and even showed a video of the school dance to hundreds of parents at back-to-school night.

"The 'dancing' of our youngsters today is one step from events that should be occurring on wedding nights," he wrote in an e-mail to parents.

Though forms of freak dancing — also called "grinding" or "the nasty" — first appeared years ago, so many students are doing it now that educators nationwide are drawing up rules of behavior, changing music formats away from freak-friendly hip-hop, and banning from dances students whose movements are deemed too sexual.

"Of all the things that happen at a high school, having to spend so much time on dances — that's out of whack," said Kelly Godfrey, principal of Los Alamitos High School in Orange County.

Some students say a crackdown on freaking would discourage them from attending school dances.

"I wouldn't go," said Chelsea Walsh, 15, a sophomore at Aliso Niguel High. "It would be boring. How else do you dance?"


When the waltz was first performed at a royal British ball in 1816, the Times of London wrote: "So long as this obscene display was confined to prostitutes and adulteresses, we did not think it deserving of notice; but now that it is attempted to be forced on the respectable classes of society … we feel it a duty to warn every parent against exposing his daughter to so fatal a contagion."

Similar generational clashes over the tango, the twist and Elvis Presley's gyrating hips followed; the theme was celebrated in the 1984 movie "Footloose."

Freaking has gained widespread acceptance in recent years, propelled by the mainstreaming of rap music and the sultry images in hip-hop videos. Critics say its unquestionably carnal positions — girl bent at the waist, boy thrusting behind her — go far beyond previous generations' bumping and grinding.

"Every generation finds its successors' dances to be improprieties," said Judith Lynne Hanna, a University of Maryland senior scholar and author of a book on dance and sexuality.

"What is the difference between frontal body rubbing and one person rubbing a backside against a front side?" she asked. "It's all sexy. Dancing is sexy. But so what? It's not sex. It's flirtation."

Whatever it is, educators from New Hampshire to Washington state are growing increasingly agitated.

Shana Kemp, spokeswoman for the National Assn. of Secondary School Principals in Reston, Va., said the organization had received an unusually high number of calls in recent months about freak dancing.

"Each generation has its own thing that … adults think is inappropriate. It's just par for the course for the changing of the times," she said. "But in some instances, it's taken too far."

Just this month, Principal Patricia Law canceled all school dances at Windsor High School north of Santa Rosa for the rest of the year after a homecoming dance where three-quarters of the nearly 800 students in attendance were freak dancing. She said students can win back their dances if they come up with a plan to keep their moves clean.

"It was time for a wake-up call," Law said.
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Hard to believe that dancing was once a form of pleasurable exercise and entertainment. It used to be taught in gym class - probably one of the reasons kids have changed it to something they will NEVER see in gym class (if they even still have gym classes - many states don't). George Washington's men danced with each other to entertain themselves as part of winter holiday celebrations (heaven knows they didn't have enough food for a feast) at Valley Forge. The Roger de Coverly could never be anything but athletic - I doubt our nation's youth has the stamina to last it out. Prehaps if real sex education was "rampant" and use of sex in advertizing and entertainment wasn't, this problem would not have come up.

My sister told me a long time ago that the definition of being "old" was when you can't stand the music the "kids" are listening to "these days" - and maybe this is a variation on a theme. If so, I must be old because I can't stand the way these kids dance these days - and older people, too, for that matter - go to a bar where people are dancing and you'll see people in their 20s and 30s dancing like they're having sex. It's pretty graphic. And it's NOT "dancing." Anyone with any class, or dignity or self respect wouldn't "dance" that way in public.... at least, not unless they were at the 8th or 9th level of drunkeness!!

So, I guess I'm officially old.

Betsy wrote:My sister told me a long time ago that the definition of being "old" was when you can't stand the music the "kids" are listening to "these days" - and maybe this is a variation on a theme. If so, I must be old because I can't stand the way these kids dance these days -

.... So, I guess I'm officially old.

When I was in high school, a friend of mine (who, it should be noted, isn't a conservative nut) described some dancing -- in a voice that I can still hear in my head -- as "practically having sex out on the dance floor!" I agreed with his description. The dancers were my age. If that makes me old, then I was old quite a bit sooner in my life than you were...

The kids love it as much for the shock value as anything else. They really don't have enough to do - especially enough that is significant to do. I don't suggest we totally trash the economy and head back to 3rd world status (though that may happen under the Rs), but cultures more interested in keeping food on the table and a sound roof overhead don't have nearly the "sex" problems we do. (That doesn't mean young people don't indulge in sexual practices, of course they do, but they aren't doing it on the dance floor to shock adults.)