When is young too young?

Whereas I hate seeing young girls in shiny cabaret bedlah - and I've seen them at some of our local stuff too - Im also stuck between a rock and a hard place.

My daughter (12 this year) comes to our ATS peer group and dances with us. Shes danced since she was 4 so there has been all sorts of leotards and legs and everything (you know how strict some dance schools are).

Anyway our costume base arrived yesterday (skirts and cholis) and she is begging me for a set.

Do I or dont I ... hmmmmmmm

I see exactly where you're coming from on your points, Tammy.

So here's another angle: what about the psychologists who say that when a child is still a youngin', they can't distinguish properly between reality and fantasy? This is what apparently screws up child actors and the JonBenets of the world. They think that their stage act and their life at school and in other pursuits (soccer, painting classes) is one and the same. Now I'm no child rearer -- but I know how to reason with young children, what to give to them and what to take and how to explain that kitty isn't gonna wake up.

I'd say quite a few of us, myself included, didn't see why we couldn't wear our prettiest party dresses to play in the mud and why we can't yell in the store when we can at home. Boundaries didn't exist as they do in our adult life, and those were the boundaries we formed in those years before being 16, 17, 18. It took my mother to say no, you can't wear a bathing suit to school - why? because I said so! for me to learn that you don't wear bikinis in line at the 7/11 (wasn't there a short story about that?). Nobody questions the logic behind wearing a cover-up between sets at hafla.

I was also raised to not go walking in the park at night even though it is a shortcut. I still don't walk through there. I'm pissed off that I can't but I figure it's much smarter to stay on the lit sidewalk. I should be able to walk where ever I damn well choose! But when I look at the crime and rape stats in my area, you can bet I'll be running to catch the bus on those same sidewalks instead of ambling through that same park. It's not "fair," but what is fair, really?

Spoonie, I haven't finished reading all the posts on the gothic tribe yet, but it's melting my brain as well.

I'm kind of beside myself with the hypocrisy between these threads. gothicbellydance.tribe.net/thre...eb720
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I promise I'm not picking on you, or even poking. You just seem to have a knack for encapsulating what others are saying, which makes replying easier and more direct.

I see a bit of difference between modeling and bellydance. Adding that goth has a tendency to be edged by a fetish market. Latex, BDSM, body mods, burlesque, etc. It attracts some people whose personalities incorporate those things into their identities in the crossover. Eg. Natalie Adams. There has yet to be a Natalie Adams shoot I dislike.

I don't really agree with the OP's stance on that one. Modeling and pageantry by nature are the exhibition of your body. It's not dance. Applying it to the thread here, a prepubescent girl would have no business modeling corsets in a context where she was being judged on her body shape and proportion based on how it appealed to others, from a marketing standpoint. You are selling your physically based image for the profit of a win/ recognition.

That's modeling for ya. You can take it in any specialty market you want, but it is what it is. Ideally in a cultural scene, the application of culture (be it Goth or Middle Eastern) would be the primary criteria for judgment, but that creates another hypocrisy when applied to belly dance, since we don't typically judge a dancer based upon having a cultural appearance or cultural fluency as being the most desirable dancer. The question there becomes are we judging whether someone fits in with a demographic, whether they are attractive or whether they uphold the ideals of the community that supports them, Goth having a hallmark for rejecting more mainstream aesthetics ideally making room for less mainstream models.

Belly dance is not about judging a persons image as it pertains to representing dance, but judging their dance ability. Were we to apply the same judgment that person X has no business being on stage Y in costume Z regardless of ability, we have reduced them to being a body. Which is all fine and well in a venue in which people are being judged for their appearance. If it were applied across the boards in dance, it would be acceptable to say that more Venusian figures have no place in bedleh, and that only those who could guarantee that they would be perceived positively in a visual sense would be allowed to represent dance.

I don't really buy into the 'objectification' thing. You can be as oversexed as you want and it doesn't flatten your personality unless you make that they only aspect of your personality that you present. You can be fully nude, and still not present a sexual image. You can be fully clothed and covered and still be seen as an object to be owned and or controlled by another person. Shaking it because you think it's the only thing that another person could value about you is a problem far deeper than appearances, clothing or lack of clothing.

I think on that my disagreement demonstrates my agreement with the ideal, in which your body and personality can be presented both the it's best effect, but that there are many gals who haven't integrated their personality into their sexuality making any display that incorporates sexuality into a flimsy attempt at winning approval from others.