Lianne McNeil wrote: .
.
men have a hard time learning to dance. And not only do they have to
learn how to coordinate their own movements, but then they have to
"steer" (lead) the woman, too, and coordinate all her "tricks" (turns)
to the right beat. It is a pretty complex maneuver. For some reason
learning to dance comes fairly easily to most women. So I suppose,
ideally, it would work better if the roles were reversed, and the woman leads. But
that's not how it's done in couple dance. So my
interpretation of the situation is that a lot of guys give up, rather
than look a fool on the dance floor. And the women get tired of sitting around.
Interesting theorizing here Lianne. Although I think we have to unpack the
essentializing about men innately having two left feet and
women being genetically predisposed to grace and elegance on the dance floor. In fact
these are socially constructed behaviors and are
first implanted during one ot the more traumatic stages of life: junior high school.
(Although many childern--boys especially--suffered
square-dance syndrome while in elementary school) In this period of the first budding
of noticing that just maybe the other sex doesn't
in fact have cooties, tremendous psychic conflict ensues. Girls,
perceiving--correctly-- that boys their own age are still dorks,
retreat to their bedrooms en masse and exchange secret information on how to dance
that they have gleaned from older sisters, or
watching American Bandstand. They take on both roles, in a kind of transgendered
ambidextrousness. This sort of behavior eventually
leads to women wearning pants to school (and oh yes, you youngsters out there, there
was time not so long ago when this was verboten).
Conversely, during this period, boys spend much time playing games or sports, punching
each other in the arm, and ridiculing each other
when one strays from the pack and actually tries to dance, a skill of course that they
have not learned, both because it would interfere
with sports or watching the three stooges after school and because the slightest
movement in this direction would cause a tightening of
the circle as the transgressor would be charged with dorkery. In this liminal period
we see the patterns embedded within a milieu of
shifting and uncertain social roles (girls *know* how to lead, but can't, because that
would upset the proper heirarchy of gender roles
and might lead to girls wearing pants to school and piercing their nose) {for this
insight, I'm indebted to Hyde and Starr, 1998} None
of this, it might be added, can lead to boys wearing dresses to school, although the
secret knowledge of girls "lead"-ership skills
causes them to have horrifying nightmares of appearning in school in just such garb,
if any garb at all! The rest of this dismal story
is well known, of course, and needs no elucidation here, except to note that (cf
L.McNeil, 1999) line dancing is clearly the result.
That, and UHI's leaning on the bar or in the back.
One thing I admire about the teenagers of today is that dancing seems
to be an "in" thing with them. Just a few years ago the dance classes
my husband and I attended would be mostly people around 40-ish. Now most
of the class is teenagers and young 20's (though all ages are there).
The kids are growing up dancing. I like that! (These are ballroom
dance classes, not country.) Another thing I admire about the young
dancers is that they aren't so rigid in their dance roles. Sometimes
same gender partners will dance together in couple dances. And some of
them are trying to learn both the lead and the follow parts.
When my 16 yr old boy was at an urban camp this summer, a bunch of the boys decided to
go get some beer and drink. He decided to go to
the dance and dance. Girls were coming up to him and telling him how cool he was for
bucking the trend and dancing instead of
drinking. OH If I had only known then what I know now. Well, at least daddy dint
raise no fool
Stuart
who promised the missus he'd start on the taxes tonight
