The contemporary
lexicon of dirty dancing includes such terms as freaking, slamming,
moshing, spanking, humping, bumping, undressing, grinding, and so
on. Dancing fascinates cultural anthropologists because it seems
that dancing is an almost universal expression of love without actually
lovemaking. But for American high school and college students in
2004, dancing has become nothing short of group sex.
A few weeks
ago, according to the Associated Press, officials at Oregon's Bend
High School shut down a school dance after the bumping and grinding
(intense sexual hip rubbing) got so out of hand that one teacher
described it as "sex with your clothes on."
Sound extreme?
One 17-year old Bend High School student responded, "it's just
the way people dance these days." Many students at the Oregon
school plan to protest this year's upcoming prom by throwing an
expensive alternative party, devoid of chaperones, rules, and normal
clothing.
After similarly
lascivious dancing at Shawnee Mission North High School in Kansas
City, a controversial dance behavior expectation policy was drafted
by administrators. One senior quoted in the Kansas City Star called
the proposed rule "a joke ... We're moving with the generation,"
she said, "This is what we've seen."
Even Christian
schools and Catholic schools have dance problems. One music DJ reports
on the website of the United States Disc Jockey Association that
upon being handed a song play list at a Catholic School dance, "At
first I thought it was the do not play list." If X-rated popular
music is intended to spark its listeners to X-rated action, it certainly
gets results. When
I was a sophomore at Puyallup High School near Seattle, parental
concerns over excessive freak dancing led to new rules for the 2001
Valentine's Day Ball. Students and administrators worked together
to formulate a reasonable compromise that included things like no
simulated sex acts, no ankle grabbing, and no lewd groping. But
renegade students, determined to repudiate the new rules, organized
a competing no-rules dance at the Liberty Theater down the street
from the high school.
At the time,
I was Class President, and I organized a meeting at which I addressed
my class of 500 on the importance of public modesty and school spirit.
My exhortations went unheeded by several hundred students who ended
up at the anarchic orgy down the street.
The notorious
breast-revealing song and dance routine performed by Janet Jackson
and Justin Timberlake at this year's Super Bowl is hardly a shocker
for my generation. Popular culture, managed in large part by the
marketing gurus of MTV, has found its way onto the dance floor of
Generation Y. Chances are, your local educational institution has
hosted a recent dance with a flock of J.Lo's and Britney Spearses
doing the freak with a testosterone charged legion of Eminems and
P. Diddy's. It is to be expected in a day when the flesh almost
always triumphs over the spirit. Having seen it all, Generation
Y is more than ready to do it all.
They've done
it all in Fort Wayne, Indiana, according to an article in last week's
Fort Wayne News Sentinel. Even in middle America,
officials were forced in to put an end to perverse gyrations,
skimpy clothing, and inappropriate lyrics in dance songs in their
local schools.
Dirty dancing
is the only kind of dancing there is, declare the louder voices
of my generation. "I've grown up with it," says one girl
at Northrop High School in Fort Wayne. "That's the way dance
is. You have to grow with the times."
In California,
Palo Alto High School principal Sandra Pearson refuses to "grow
with times." Pearson banned freak dancing at her high school
last year because she said it "is like pornography ... there
are instances when a girl will be on the floor and there will be
guys on top of her,'' gyrating in sync to the song. The San Jose
Mercury News adds to Pearson's description: "There are times
when a student's head is nuzzled in another's crotch. Or legs are
hung around hips as pelvises thrust against each other. Basically,
it's anything that looks like sex."
Even the rebellious
Baby Boomers were quite puritanical in their dance styles, I'm told,
in contrast to this generation. Generation Y is bumping and grinding
its way to the gates of perdition. The promiscuity, the abortions,
the broken hearts, the empty minds, the annihilated souls are proof
of a generation that is literally "freaking" out.