Business…check out me lil’ look at OJ Mayo for Page 2.
So much I wanna talk about that came up this weekend, but only so much time. Maybe I’ll stretch the stuff out over a few days. That’ll help me get back to my old level of output or something, I think.
One thing stood out, though…
I went to the UniverSoul circus in Greensboro on Saturday. Been a decade or two since I’d been to a circus, but I was down. Plus, this was the Negro circus. I’d never seen a bear do the Tootsee Roll, so I figured it was worth the trip down there.
The show was generally cool. It’s done on a relatively small scale, so I appreciate that they were able to pull off much of what they did. The only problem I had with it was the regurgitation of cliche notions of what you have to have at a black event. You have to take it to the old school, you have to tell a joke about gettin’ beat as a child, you have to shout out what your church is…all that stuff. It’s essentialist blackness in its purest form. But hey, they did play “Flash Light.”
But there’s one more thing you gotta have at the black event–the dance contest for the kids.
For some reason, kids love to get in dance contests. Maybe it’s because I knew as a youth that I was better at math than dancing, but I never got off on that stuff. And as an adult, I never really warmed to dancing. It was just what you had to do to meet women in college. What you gonna do at the club, really start a conversation? Nope, just show you can follow the booty wherever it goes so that, in case it ever comes up, there’s a belief that you can follow the booty wherever it goes.
Back to the lecture at hand–there were three little girls brought on stage for a dance contest. A couple of them looked a little nervous about it, almost as though their parents encouraged them to do it so they ran up and did it. What would make a mother prouder than seeing her child cut the rug where an elephant just took a short nap, right?
Then there was this third little girl. She was a fairly cute child. One of her parents appeared South Asian, but she was clearly black (and considering that her hair didn’t look a hot mess, I’m guessing her mother’s black). Anyway, she had a look in her eye the whole time that she was about to win this dance contest. She was gonna get out there and show them other lil girls how it was done.
So the music played. I can’t remember just what song it was, but it was something popular that gets constant radio play. The needle hit the record, and the first two girls I mentioned started dancing. They neither seemed to enthralled with the activity nor too sure what to do.
But uhhhh, that third lil’ girl had no such problem.
Who wants to guess what she did? Anybody? Anybody?
Oh, you ain’t even have to guess, did you? One hand went straight up in the air and was spinnin around like she was on a horse tryin to rope a calf. The lower half? Uhhh, up and down like a teeter totter. Booty booty booty booty rockin everywhere.
And she turned around and made sure the crowd saw said booty was droppin’. At this lil spot on Mangum by the ballpark in Durham, that’s worth a couple bucks. I wish I was joking.
Oh buddy. My date commented that if she were at such a venue performing such an activity, her mother would be in snatchin’ range. No way she’d embarrass her mama like that.
This lil thang’s mama didn’t feel the same way.
But you know what? Neither did too many other mamas. Cuz when it was time to crown a winner based on applause, these niggaz started clapping for the lil hot mama like she’d just come back with a gold medal or made the final 8 on American Idol. Damn near deafening, Jack.
(And in fairness, she could also lean and rock wit it pretty well, and that wasn’t too disturbing.)
Still not sure what to say about that. I just know this–I had a similar moment in University Homes in Atlanta on Halloween. Because the baddest girl in my freshman class was sponsoring a community service initiative where students would take kids from the projects trick or treating through the dorms, I made a trip down there for a party on 10/31/97. It was a great time, really.
But when that music came on, them lil boys started coming out of their shirts and them girls…let’s just say they were droppin it better than the ones I went to college with. And my jaw dropped once at a party my first week at Clark.
I say that to say this–things have changed, but maybe not that much. Damn near ten years later, the kids is on the same stuff. That makes me think more than just television’s at play here.
But would you clap for the little girl twurker on stage at the Negro circus? Would you be appalled? Would you not care? And be real–how old were you when you started droppin it to the ground?
(Tomorrow, I’ll talk about Chappelle’s Show from Sunday night. Gotta watch it again on TiVo. Spectacular stuff.)
12 thoughts on “Twurkers–They Make Em Young”
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it shames me to admit this..but i run a daycare (administrative part)
i was sitting in an impromptu talent show…and two of the boys start this lip-sync of a “clean version” of laffy taffy…
I had to leave the room.
THEN i had to translate the lyrics to the teachers…so they knew why i was bothered by 8 and 10 yr olds spoutin this stuff…
And her mother will probably throw a fit when she becomes yet another fast-ass little girl around 13 or 14. Or maybe not.
I twinge at the fact of these little girls dropping it like it’s hot.
Growing up my friends and I never thought about dropping it like it’s hot. And this is because our mother’s would have snatched us bald.
As for applauding the little girl twerking it and shaking her booty, I don’t think I would give her a thunderous round of applause but I’m also not going to boo her. But I would give her mama the eye.
Just read the OJ article. Seems to be the best of both worlds…
Turn around a big time program that has had no REAL Success recently…plus the whole Snoop Will Farrell whomever else angle.
I think because he carries his own name (hell hes on ESPN.com already) he feels he doesnt need the name of a big coach/basketball program…
You will see a lot of kids tinker with the new yellow brick road now that they HAVE to go SOMEWHERE after High SChool.
Now what I wanna see is if some of these kids will skip school and barnstorm for a year, like someone suggested.
O.J. Mayo going to USC… Lil’ girls dropping it at the Black Circus… Next, DMX gets a reality show…oh wait…they didn’t really…oh hell.
It’s bad enough that litle boys and girls are sexualized so early, but the fact that people encourage it is disgusting. Unfortunately, many adults think that precocity (even that related to sex) is cute.
Legitimate shame has been on its last legs for some time now.
This was hilarious, sad, but funny.
With any luck she’ll outgrow her parents’ bad influence and go to college. They don’t dance like that in college do they? Oh wait.
I seem to recall that there is at least one college in Atlanta that protested hiphop’s vision of women. Which one was that?
I am glad someone brough out the fast-ass reference because that’s the mark of someone who is down with the old school.
Check out these sites (non a non-sequitur) as the group home one gives one look into damaging early sexualization and then the view of sexuality for kids in Japanese schools. Both sites are story-based blogs and can be pretty funny:
http://www.gaijinsmash.net/
evan
In ’95 I was a PA on a video in Atlanta for some random So So Def artist’s bass record. The budget was so immense (not), that the video was shot on an open field in a park somewhere in the city, and let’s just say that there was lots of local flavor on the set. I must say that I’ve never seen so much ass shakin’ (both adult and child sized), in my entire life. I’m from Jersey, and up until the fairly recent take over of music by the South (not saying it’s a bad thing), we danced differently. For the most part we still do. It’s still more about the upper body than the lower.
My question is this, where does the line get drawn between pure expression and simple fun, and something wrong? And who gets to draw that line? It makes me nervous when people use words like “shame”. And besides, it’s “fast ass” chicks in church who’ve never worn pants, or danced a day in their lives. There’s something more at play than imagery on tv or song lyrics.
Stephanie,
The line is drawn by you and you are the only person who determines whether something crosses it or not. If your concern is in personal expression breaching the norm, the concern is actually irrelevant as someone had to get past the Waltz, Twist and Bankhead Bounce to get here.
Evan
Stephanie,
I understand your concern, but that’s why I said “legitimate shame.”
Certainly, people shouldn’t be subject to shame based on sexual orientation, religion, etc., but isn’t it a good thing for people to be ashamed of being racist, of not taking care of their children, of demeaning women?
Somehow, people have come to view shame as a tool of oppression imposed on the less powerful from above. It can be that, but shame can also be a helpful tool to limit destructive social behaviors when people aren’t willed enough to avoid them on their own.
Who makes the determination about what constitutes “legitimate shame?” I would like to say that collective common sense does, but that’s not the case. I do and you do. Thus, there isn’t consensus, but multiple expressions of legitimate shame are better than none.