GUEST OPINION by senior comp student Parker Hoye

There has always been opposition to new styles of dancing. Every generation pushes the limit just a little bit farther as their parents and grandparents inevitably protest. The younger generation embraces freedom and individualism; until their children continue the cycle. But where do we draw the line? There must be a point at which the sensual level of dancing has to plateau in order to preserve basic human modesty, and once that limit is reached, it is up to the youth to recognize and respect that limit. We are that generation. We have crossed the line by turning extremely sexual contact and motions into a “dance.” It is time for us to rethink what we consider acceptable, and change the way we enjoy ourselves on the dance floor.

It is a simple fact that grinding arouses sexual feelings in teenagers, especially males. Some would insist this is just a natural reaction and therefore should not be tempered. While sexual feelings are indeed natural, the same is true of sex, but we don’t allow this to take place in public places such as school, so why should accept grinding in the same arena? It should be left out of school dances because a public school is not the place for sexual provocation.

How many parents would be appalled if they watched one of our dances? I realize this would be a generation clash, and that a parent’s wish might not be the most effective motivator for teenagers, but bear with me. Take Sally, for instance, and her father Bill. If Bill attended a school dance, and saw little Johnny rubbing his genital area against Sally’s rear, little Johnny might be staring down the business end of a 12-gauge before he knew it. Now my example was extreme, but the point is clear: most fathers wouldn’t tolerate how their daughters are treated at a school dance. They love their daughters, and every father wants his little girl to be treated with respect. Maybe even more, they want their daughters to treat themselves and their bodies with respect.

Why do you care? Because you’ll have a daughter some day, and you’ll probably want the high school boys to keep their pelvic thrusts well away from your sophomore girl. This “sexual devaluation” train is accelerating, and if we don’t step on the brakes, we’ll watch our children get run over by it in 30 years, and we’re not going to like what we see. By that time, it will be unstoppable, and Denzel Washington won’t be around to save us again.

Keep this thought in mind: grinding may not be as critical to having a good time at the dance as you might think. How many teenagers weren’t extremely thrilled about grinding in the first place? Many were simply thrust into the grinding mix as freshmen, and accepted their role as regular participants. How many grind simply because everyone else is grinding? There are alternatives to grinding, even for someone who has done nothing but grind in high school. Plenty of teenagers have learned to line dance, freestyle, or ballroom dance (which isn’t confined to slow piano music). Before the sixties, dancing had always been something to be learned, just like shooting a basketball. Once someone learned a dance, the fun began, as they became better and better at that dance.

Our parents were the first to begin to take the talent and work out of dancing with the seventies’ freestyle dance. But we have completely taken any semblance of talent out of the equation. Teenagers don’t need natural rhythm to grind; it takes absolutely no effort at all. It isn’t even exertive. The man places his crotch on the female’s backside, and they merely make thrusting or swaying motions. If we actually learned to dance again, we would enjoy dancing so much more! The product of even a small amount of work is much more rewarding than something as simplistic as grinding. I argue that grinding is by no means the most enjoyable, active, or challenging dance out there. It is at the bottom of the latter two categories, if not all three.

The point of dancing is fun and self-expression. But when it comes to grinding, it seems the “fun” is limited to a form of sexual bouncing, and the self-expression is both inappropriate for school and promoting of a deplorable future generation. This is not a call for the school systems to ban touching at school dances, or for self-righteous individuals to police the dance floor, imposing their will on classmates with differing opinions. This is a call to reconsider how we dance and why we dance in that way.

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