Listen, Fellas, I Don’t Get It Either – Dance Moms
The Abby Lee Dance Company is apparently the studio in the Pittsburgh area for all aspiring dancers to hone their craft and achieve the dream of dancing on Broadway or at a Disney park or Disney cruise or wherever else one might get paid to dance that doesn’t involve a pole, I guess. This also makes it the premier studio for aspiring dancers who couldn’t hack it in their own primes to send their children to in order to live vicariously through them. Of course, this makes it the perfect setting for a reality show on Lifetime. Each episode of the show focuses on the Junior Elite Competition Team, comprised of girls between the ages of 6 and 15, and their mothers, who seem to spend the vast majority of their time in the viewing room above the rehearsal studio. In this tiny little room with carpeted risers for chairs and trophies lining the wall, these mothers talk shit on each other and the other children while their 9 year olds dance in the muted room below until the wee hours of the evening on weeknights. Still, it’s Abby who is perpetually painted as the villain for being tough on her students and challenging their limits in order to prepare them for lives as professional dancers. You know, precisely what these overbearing, uber-stage-moms are paying her good money for.
Why Chicks Love It
This show has all the makings of a ground-breaking, award-winning reality tv show: sequined leotards and tight buns, fake lashes and high kicks, and shit-talking and back-stabbing amongst friends! And of course, we can’t forget the little girls crying and having anxiety three minutes before they go on stage to perform! This shit is a television gold mine! Plus, we can’t forget the exotic and awe-inspiring locale — lovely … Pittsburgh, PA … home of repugnant professional sports teams and … steel, I think. There’s at least one catfight per episode and at least 3 instances of tears, usually from the kids, but the mothers aren’t above this sort of behavior, either. I watch this show and feel nothing but pity for these little girls. I also feel undying gratitude that my own mother only made me take one summer class of jazz dance just to see if it might be something I was into (spoiler alert: it was not). I can’t help but wonder if there are other adult women out there watching this show and reconnecting with their own childhoods, good or bad. They’re either remembering the good ol’ days when they could enjoy their dance classes as a kid or their curling up into the fetal position and rocking back and forth in some sort of PTSD-fueled breakdown.
Why It’s Terrible
Initially, I thought I was going to be upset with the way Abby Lee Miller treated the children in her classes. As it turns out, she’s probably the most responsible adult on the show. I’ve heard these mothers say things like, “Of course my daughter has poor reading comprehension! She misses school all the time for dance! Dance is way more important than school!” In the confessional interviews with the girls themselves, they reveal that they spend school nights at the studio until nearly midnight. These girls are, for the most part, in elementary school, specifically about the 4th grade, if they’re lucky. At 9 and 10 years old, their parents have already determined the course of their lives. Now, don’t get me wrong — these kids are fucking talented and well trained, which is an impressive combination to find in an adult performer. They’re also kids. These moms either never had a job to speak of or quit their jobs/sold their businesses in order to spend more time at the studio. One mother has a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania and was a principal, but, per the show’s Wikipedia, “has since given up her office career in an effort to spend time at the studio rediscovering her daughter’s dance potential.” This woman was an important role model for not just her own daughter, but young girls everywhere. But with just a taste of reality-celebrity, she’s abandoned all of that education and accomplishment in order to … what, make sure that her daughter gets a solo dance in next week’s competition in Lancaster, PA? The other women spend their time adding rhinestones to costumes and discussing the finer points of Botox because, at 40, you should totally be injecting botulism into your face to prevent any kind of human expression or reaction from presenting itself and creating further wrinkles. They nitpick how much time the other children get to rehearse with Abby and blame any and all mistakes their incredibly talented children might make on anything else that might be handy and believable. What if any one of these girls gets to 15 or 16 and realizes that they really like science or math? What if they decide that they want to be writers or doctors or architects? What if what they want to do all day in elementary school isn’t what they actually want to do for the rest of their lives? Christ, when I was 9, I really enjoyed making pillow forts and playing Nintendo. What if my mom quit her job and devoted her entire life to turning me into Ben Savage in The Wizard, only to discover 5 years later that I really wasn’t into playing Super Mario Bros. 3 anymore? … I guess she’d take up day-drinking and botox, like these women have, just to avoid the complete nervous breakdown that inevitably follows the realization that you have nothing in your life except your children’s activities.
