8-Year-Old Women

Today, I attended my 4-year-old niece's dance recital.  It was a pretty fun recital, with some amazingly talented dancers.  However, I was troubled at the presentation of some of the girls in the performance.  Normally, I am concerned by the teenager girls' costumes for these events, which can often be revealing and provocative.  I was pleasantly surprised, however, that the older groups were modestly dressed.  No, I was actually alarmed about the girls who were between about 8 and 10 years old.  For the most part, their dress was modest.  What troubled me was that these young girls dressed, danced, and acted as though they were dancers in their 20s.  I realized that I was witnessing what might be termed an early maturation of these young girls.   (Allow me to take a moment here and point out that there were guys in the recital, and they were not dressed up as little men.)  Had the younger girls been in their 20s, I don't think I would have objected much to the music, dances, or costumes, since none were really immodest, with the exception of one number.  However, these young girls were dancing and lip syncing to songs about "love" and physical attraction.  

Here's the bottom line: there's nothing wrong with encouraging kids to grow up.  However, there is something wrong with teaching kids that being a grown-up centers around being attractive and attracting members of the opposite sex.  It's one thing for these kids to play "dress-up" and wear costumes that are meant for adults, and another thing to choose songs, dance steps, and costumes that encourage them to carry themselves physically like a woman.  Keep in mind, all but maybe one of the numbers (which had young girls wearing costumes that were meant to accentuate their upper body) were modest.  However, are these dances the best we can choose for our kids?  I believe that situations like this one illustrate that we are allowing (or encouraging) our kids to be adults before they actually are, and that at the same time we do so in a way that depicts sensuality as the defining characteristic of adulthood.

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