This weekend I witnessed something that
may actually scar me for life. I went to a birthday party for a five
year old who has an older and a younger sister, so there were little
girls and boys there raging in age from a few years old to ten or
eleven years old. The party was fun and I stayed late into the night
visiting with my friend who is the mother of the birthday girl. A
sleepover was being held that night, so we all piled in the living
room and dragged a mattress in for all the little kids to sleep on –
and incidentally jump on – and put the television on one of those
stations way at the end of the channels that plays just music; no
videos or anything. The channel the kids wanted was of course the
pop music channel and so they all danced around and shouted out the
wrong lyrics to a bunch of top 40 songs. Two of the girls had taken
ballet for a bit and whirled and twirled like ballerinas to every
song that came on whether it was a Bruno Mars love song or an Eminem
rap song and two of the older girls were taking hip-hop classes and
busted out some of their moves. All in all, we were having a pretty
good time, laughing and singing and dancing. Then...
One little girl, whom I found out is in
2nd grade, which means she is six or possibly seven years
old, had not had any dance lessons and was apparently not content with
jumping around and making up her own moves. My friend had gone into
the kitchen to make some food and I was left alone with all eight
kids. So, this little girl ran up to me with her little freckled
face beaming at me and her eyes shining and her soft little hair
pulled up in a pony-tail and said “Hey watch me! Watch me!”. I
said okay and I watched. This tiny child was in a purple t-shirt and
hot pink tight shorts; the shorts were made like leggings, only they
were short. This child proceeds to spread her legs, touch her
fingertips to the floor, stick her tiny butt up in the air and, lets
face it, her ooh-hoo all exposed and starts twerking. I was shocked.
It was the most repulsive and heartbreaking thing I have ever
witnessed. For those of you who don't know what twirking is, it's
what Miley Cyrus did at the Grammys that grossed everyone out. It is
a dance that looks like you are having sex from behind, as the
twirking is usually done with your ooh-hoo mashed up against a man's
pelvis and you bounce and grind. My mouth just hung open for a
second as I watched this little bitty child bend over and bounce her
butt up and down as fast as it would go so it would jiggle. Then she
varied her dance by bringing her fingertips up from the floor to
about waist high, still bent over twirking for dear life. My stomach
actually rolled. I have no idea who's child this was or even what
her name was, but I had to tell her she had to stop doing that. I
wanted to put her in time out and take away her MTV privileges, but
not having any idea who she is, it might be hard to enforce that.
Then
after I swallowed the little bit I had thrown up in my mouth, I
looked at her and she looked so hurt that I refused to watch her
anymore. She kept running in front of me doing this and I would
deliberately look at one of the other kids and pretend this child was
invisible. I felt mean. I could just tell she was one of those kids
that didn't get a lot of attention. You know how you can just kind
of tell? They try too hard or something. She desperately wanted to
impress me and the other kids, she needed that attention and I just
couldn't watch what she was doing. I couldn't have been more
sickened if I had been watching this six year old have sex. I know
this is a graphic blog today and not particularly funny. I had
started out trying to make it funny, but I find that I can't joke
about how inappropriate this was.
You
know, I didn't care when Miley Cyrus did it. She wasn't the only
one, no one said a word about Robin Thicke who is married and has a
kid; the female was the one called nasty names of course. But her
career and all the people who work for her, agents, assistants,
make-up artists, wardrobe designers, stage crew, everyone, depends on
Miley getting publicity. Well, that is just what she did. She was
talked about for days and days afterward and still gets made fun of
and has jokes written about her on every on-line forum I've been on.
Good for her. She is a grown woman who must stand out from a million
other pop singers and she did it. She's no more vulgar than Madonna
or Cher or Jennifer Lopez or any of the other women who have to use
their bodies to sell their music. I don't hold her responsible for
being a role model for anybody. I made sure I was the role model for
my own kids and turned the television off when someone was doing
something I didn't want my kids copying.
So my
question is, who are the parents of this child? She's supposed to be
innocent and playing with Barbies and Legos right now; not imitating
rear-entry sex! She was so hungry for attention that she grabbed
onto the first grown-up that looked like they might pay her some and
did anything she could think of to earn praise and compliments like
the other girls. And no child ever has made up that dance. Not the
way she was doing it. You'd have thought she had taken twirking
lessons or something. Obviously she is seeing these music videos and
imitating what she witnesses. I guess if there is a moral to this
story it is this: Please, parents, pay attention to what your kid is
watching. My kids didn't have TVs in their own rooms until last
year. My son bought it with his own money and he is going to be
sixteen this month. So, clearly a child in the wild can survive up
to 15 years without having a television in their room with unlimited
access to shows. Put one TV in the living room and monitor what
those six year old eyeballs are seeing. You'd be surprised.
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