Bumping, Grinding, And Freak Dancing
By Hans Zeiger (04/26/04)
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."
But, says one 17-year old Bend High School student, "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 appropriate clothing.
After similarly lascivious dancing at Shawnee Mission North High School in Kansas City, a controversial dance behavior expectation policy has been 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 the 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 this 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. School officials are making what effort they can to put an end to perverse gyrations, skimpy clothing, and inappropriate lyrics in dance songs.
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 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.
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