ATLANTA, GA – A pole dancing class marketed as a mother-daughter activity is raising reasonable concerns regarding whether the endeavor is a blatant affair in the realm of child sexualization.
There are a number of questionable activities aimed at children, namely prepubescent girls, nowadays and in years past which have raised eyebrows on whether the activities transcend the limits of harmless fun and encroach what could ostensibly be perceived as obvious sexualization of children.
One needn’t delve too far into the memory banks to ponder the likes of youthful pop stars, or mere backup dancers/video girls depicted in music videos amidst the heyday of MTV, as well as the questionable motives revolving around youth beauty pageants to conjure concerns about ostensible child sexualization.
But in the aforementioned examples, there was always an existing iota of there being an element of innocent fun and creativity motivating the efforts and activities.
In contrast, however, when it comes to what an Atlanta dance studio is promoting, it seems to be a bit of a harder sell to assert that pole dancing is an activity appropriate for children to participate in.
The Pink Pole Studio out of Atlanta, Georgia, announced their “Mommy and Me” class centered around pole dancing on January 7th, marketing the class as some sort of innocuous undertaking akin to any other typical mother-daughter bonding experience. A video posted on Instagram by the studio advertising the class even featured a song from the Rugrats movie soundtrack in tandem with video clips of children ranging in age groups from toddlers to teens participating in pole dancing moves and exercises.
When it comes to the likes of youthful pop stars being questionably promoted, arguably problematic dance routines, and even the mildly unsettling youth beauty pageants, at least the aforementioned activities present various shreds of innocuousness. Pole dancing, however, is solely embedded in sexualization.
Whilst some naysayers may espouse pole dancing requires advanced degrees of athleticism, ergo kids being engaged in a form of athletics is an inherent positive, this line of thinking reeks of the logical fallacy known as affirming the consequent.
It is without a doubt that pole dancing requires varying degrees of strength and stamina, thus practicing or engaging in the act could be described as an athletic feat. Yet, to describe pole dancing as solely an innocuous act of athleticism would require one to disregard every other facet embodying the act – namely the deliberate sexual signaling encompassing the display. By adopting the same sort of logic of those who are apologists of child pole dancing classes, one could categorize literal sex as being tantamount to a light morning jog considering the two acts burn calories.
Pole dancing has always been a staple of seedy clubs marketed to men of prurient interest; this is an indisputable fact. Just because various dance studios have opted to offer pole dancing classes to their respective members in recent years, the novel offerings alone do not divorce the practice from what it is intended to display and signal to viewers.
When it comes to this pole dancing class being served and marketed at a mother-daughter affair out of Atlanta, while it would be easy to lay blame exclusively on the venue itself, it could be argued that a heftier portion of the blame should be levied at the sort of parents who’d enroll their children in such a salacious class.
It’s a conundrum akin to the drug dealer versus the parent who buys their kids drugs; who would be considered worse in the aforesaid scenario?
There will always be purveyors of smut, indecency, and degeneracy, including those who may attempt to lure children via their parents by way of a lens of innocuousness. But astute parents should be able to easily see through such facades, and those who don’t are simply no better and arguably worse than the pushers of such filth.
There are a number of questionable activities aimed at children, namely prepubescent girls, nowadays and in years past which have raised eyebrows on whether the activities transcend the limits of harmless fun and encroach what could ostensibly be perceived as obvious sexualization of children.
One needn’t delve too far into the memory banks to ponder the likes of youthful pop stars, or mere backup dancers/video girls depicted in music videos amidst the heyday of MTV, as well as the questionable motives revolving around youth beauty pageants to conjure concerns about ostensible child sexualization.
But in the aforementioned examples, there was always an existing iota of there being an element of innocent fun and creativity motivating the efforts and activities.
In contrast, however, when it comes to what an Atlanta dance studio is promoting, it seems to be a bit of a harder sell to assert that pole dancing is an activity appropriate for children to participate in.
The Pink Pole Studio out of Atlanta, Georgia, announced their “Mommy and Me” class centered around pole dancing on January 7th, marketing the class as some sort of innocuous undertaking akin to any other typical mother-daughter bonding experience. A video posted on Instagram by the studio advertising the class even featured a song from the Rugrats movie soundtrack in tandem with video clips of children ranging in age groups from toddlers to teens participating in pole dancing moves and exercises.
When it comes to the likes of youthful pop stars being questionably promoted, arguably problematic dance routines, and even the mildly unsettling youth beauty pageants, at least the aforementioned activities present various shreds of innocuousness. Pole dancing, however, is solely embedded in sexualization.
Whilst some naysayers may espouse pole dancing requires advanced degrees of athleticism, ergo kids being engaged in a form of athletics is an inherent positive, this line of thinking reeks of the logical fallacy known as affirming the consequent.
It is without a doubt that pole dancing requires varying degrees of strength and stamina, thus practicing or engaging in the act could be described as an athletic feat. Yet, to describe pole dancing as solely an innocuous act of athleticism would require one to disregard every other facet embodying the act – namely the deliberate sexual signaling encompassing the display. By adopting the same sort of logic of those who are apologists of child pole dancing classes, one could categorize literal sex as being tantamount to a light morning jog considering the two acts burn calories.
Pole dancing has always been a staple of seedy clubs marketed to men of prurient interest; this is an indisputable fact. Just because various dance studios have opted to offer pole dancing classes to their respective members in recent years, the novel offerings alone do not divorce the practice from what it is intended to display and signal to viewers.
When it comes to this pole dancing class being served and marketed at a mother-daughter affair out of Atlanta, while it would be easy to lay blame exclusively on the venue itself, it could be argued that a heftier portion of the blame should be levied at the sort of parents who’d enroll their children in such a salacious class.
It’s a conundrum akin to the drug dealer versus the parent who buys their kids drugs; who would be considered worse in the aforesaid scenario?
There will always be purveyors of smut, indecency, and degeneracy, including those who may attempt to lure children via their parents by way of a lens of innocuousness. But astute parents should be able to easily see through such facades, and those who don’t are simply no better and arguably worse than the pushers of such filth.
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