This is written by a high school young man for his school paper. It was difficult for me to believe that a teenage guy wrote the article - especially knowing the teenage boys that I know. His article expresses his displeasure with the "Song Team" at their school, who performed at an "Aloha Rally". There is a link to the video of the routine. I watched it and, although I thought it was highly inappropriate, I expected to see much worse. I told my husband that's probably because I'm not a teenage boy! ;)
An excerpt:
The first thing the freshman girls and all the young ladies in the audience are seeing at this rally is that to be popular and admired by the school, you have to flaunt your body.
We are teaching the female student population that their biggest asset is how their genetics shaped them and how sexually they can move their limbs. That is the wrong lesson for a Nationally Recognized Blue Ribbon school.
The female population has more to offer than the amount of skin they can show and still be in dress code. The vast majority of girls at school move on to higher education, and yet these same girls try out in a fierce competition to be on the Song Team to be taught how to market their bodies.
We should not be encouraging the type of behavior that may lead to problems like depression, eating disorders and men treating women like objects.
The girls on the Song Team clearly are talented dancers.
If their energy were focused on creating a routine that displayed skill in dancing, the song team could be a productive outlet for girls who really enjoy dancing, but the routine at this rally went beyond a display of skill and became downright dirty.
We need to have administrative approval of song team routines with an eye to removing all moves that are explicitly sexual, which would have been almost of all of this rally’s routine.
Our school should recognize that we as a student body and the young women on the Song Team have more to offer than sexually-explicit dance routines.
(H/T Right on the Left Coast)
