Nothing Cute about Cuties

The recent uproar over Netflix’s decision to screen a French film, “Cuties”, brings me to make a comment. Especially since family defender/crusader Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) asked the Justice Department to investigate to determine if any parts of the film could be classified as pornographic.

I watched the entire film (in an accelerated mode) so I could form my own conclusions. The film is a highly sexualized, extremely provocative, and deeply disturbing look at the transformation of a young Muslim girl into a hip-hopping part of a four-girl dance troupe called “Cuties.” The girls are very young and may not yet even be teenagers.

Their dance routine includes all the contemporary thigh-thrusting and crotch-grabbing maneuvers common today in staged, choreographed adult dancing. The Cuties truly are “little women” when it comes to making their bodies gyrate in obviously suggestive ways.

There is no nudity in the film, so perhaps the Justice Department will determine the film can’t be considered porn after all. Yet, it is more than distressing. It is disgusting. Young girls should be doing what young girls do rather than imitating what young women and men do on stage during the Oscars, other awards programs like the Emmy’s, the Tony’s, the MTV music awards, live broadcast concerts, and on and on. Thigh-thrusting dance moves are everywhere in modern American dance, and it’s no wonder that children are watching so they can do the same.

Where is the outrage over this kind of distasteful dancing when it is broadcast on DWTS? That includes shirtless male dancers and women who are spilling out of their tight, skimpy leotards? Where’s the boycott against ABC for televising this kind of coarse entertainment?

There is no indignation because we have grown accustomed to this kind of dance. We see it everywhere, even during the Super Bowl halftime show with snaps that don’t stay snapped. Crude dancing is a yawner when it is done by adult men and women, but it’s the end of the world when prepubescent girls do the same thing.

I’m not much into double standards. These dance moves are disgusting regardless of the age of the dancer. I don’t know how to reverse this downward trend into the smutty underbelly of the publicly profane. I know the answer is not with the Justice Department. The answer, in part, lies with me and my tolerance for things I am unwilling to change.