Playing sexy? Children performing Beyonce’s “All The Single Ladies” in barely-there outfits is nothing to cheer about.
While the objectification of young girls has been widely tolerated in the name of “the spotlight,” will this video of five children put on display in bedazzled bikinis finally key parents into the danger of Lolita-izing their daughters?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrKukbZjX8A]
The performance, part of the World of Dance competition in Pomona, Calif., last month, features two minutes of hip thrusts, high kicks and sensual strutting around a stage. No, it’s nothing Beyonce didn’t already do herself, but when has likening children to a 28-year-old superstar become a warranted excuse for objectification? This isn’t something kids should be doing in front of their bedroom mirror, let alone for an audience full of video cameras. It isn’t artistic, it’s raunchy. And its had thousands of views on YouTube in a matter of days.
Ask me to “lighten up” all you like, but I can see little other to this video than a group of promising little girls asked to take part in something that, at its core, just seems filthy. Children are not yet in possession of their own sexuality, and until they are, it should be protected, not put on parade.