Hello Monday

Lauren got some gorgeous black suede stilettos when we were at the outlet mall this weekend- her first pair of super-high heels, to go with a beautiful, long purple formal gown she just got. She's practicing walking in them. I got some stuff at the Gap. The boys went off to man stores and didn't end up going home with anything. Aww.

So I saw the story of the seven-year-olds doing very sexy dance moves in very tiny outfits... When Lauren was doing cheer, there were little girls that age (and younger) from other gyms who flipped up the backs of their skirts to show their sparkly-shorts-covered rear ends to the crowd, and those types of moves. Our gym was always very against that sort of choreography, and the parents appreciated it. By conscious decision of the staff, our teams didn't use cheer outfits with bare midriffs, even for the teenagers. I don't necessarily have a problem with bare midriffs, as long as the skirts aren't being worn too low (most cheer skirts are fairly high on the waist), but it was nice not to even have to deal with that.

The age of kids who display this type of behavior gets younger and younger, and in the end it's really about the parents and their encouragement of it. The children are just doing what their dance instructor taught them, and what their parents obviously think is alright. Ever been to a dance or cheer facility? The parents are always there. This stuff isn't created in a vacuum and shown on performance day to the shock of the moms and dads. Eww, I hadn't even thought of the dads here. They are encouraging this with their 2nd-grade daughters? Jeff cringes when our sixteen-year-old wears short shorts.