Underdressed teens prancing about on school stage

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I'm feel so old but when did this become a thing?
I've been to a couple of high school showcase evenings this year. Where the kids show off their singing, play musical instruments, do some acting or dancing.
The evenings are really good and it's brilliant for the kids to be able to show off their talents but sometimes the clothes the girls wear for the dancing acts seem a bit inappropriate to me.
The one I went to last week had two teenage girls in what looked like knickers and t-shirts dancing very well but rather erotically to a Beyonce song.
The girls were really good at dancing and would not have been out of place on a stage or a lap dancing club but AIBU to feel it's not very appropriate at a school event?
Do all high schools have these sort of dance classes? Is dancing around in skimpy clothes just a normal thing to do nowadays?
I'll put down the pearls I have been clutching and am fully prepared to be told to get with the times!

My point was that it's not only girls who sexualise themselves

And. Actually, sending Dick Pics is far more sexualising themselves than dressing in revealing clothes. Because a dick pic is EXPLICITLY sexual. Wearing revealing clothes is only considered sexual because of the expectations of society. Especially breasts.

100% not new - been a thing for at least 20 years if not more.
I have a very strong memory of ~15 years ago watching my younger, then 15ish sister do cell block tango and being pretty horrified despite the fact I would have done the same 4 years earlier without batting an eyelid. Teenagers always feel more grown up than they are.

(Now, the music teacher at my school who got a YEAR 7 to sing ‘Hey Big Spender’ & suggested she go sit on a dads lap 🤢 - that was fully gross at the time & remains so).

what Ginger says really plus dance is a GCSE in most schools.

Were they Nike pro or pro knock offs? My eyes popped on a train the other day when a white girl had a cream coloured pair on. On the stage in a dance performance ok, on the platform at Stockport less so.

Yep, hot pants with a boob tube as a teen thing in the 90’s. I remember this from my high school days - always some kids gyrating on stage to Christina Aguilera or Spice Girls in virtually nothing.. I wasn’t as cool - I remember doing an Abba medley 😂 (it was way before Mamma Mia so I like to think we were ahead of the times).

It’s just been dance season and my god I’ve been cringing on social media seeing girls from 5-15 dressed and done up like something that belongs in a window in Amsterdam. Not only that, I don’t want to see a gushy reel taken by dad of his 9 year old gyrating about and slapping her backside with the caption ‘my gorgeous princess’. Gives me the ick. I used to do tap dancing in the 80’s and it was done without the excessive makeup and inappropriate dances and dresses.

When I was at school the compulsory uniform for dance/gymnastics was a leotard. You could use leotard fabric tights as well (dk technical name?)
But it was really tight and skimpy. I was quite big and found it excruciating.
I think they should allow kids to wear baggier clothes during dance if they wish. But also if they wish to wear skimpy costumes then that's ok too. As long as it's not like fetish wear, thongs etc obviously.
Professional dancers often have to wear clothes that show their body movements to the maximum. I agree the skimpy stuff should never be compulsory though.

I would say this isn't new. Nearly 40 years ago I remember my school's gym and dance display where the top dancer did a solo, and it was at this point as a 12 year old myself, I realised that her leotard hid nothing of her emerging body. There was full camel toe and absolutely no support for her bust which was jiggling all over the place, her tits literally had their own individual solos.

The worst of it was seeing my beloved grandfathers face as he watched the display, and i just couldnt work out in my young mind whether he was appreciating the art or if there wasnt something a little pervy there.

He was a good man, but it all felt really distasteful and I felt like I learned something a little bit awful about a mans gaze that day.

Often shocked these days.... but it's not new.

As much as many women may want to think different. A very high proportion of males (far more than some wifes like to believe) do look at certainly teenage girls in revealing clothing in a less than pure way. These are your husbands/sons/brothers/uncles etc. To think otherwise would be deluding themselves.

It may well be creepy & disgusting. They perhaps should avert their gaze and not think impure thoughts. But the reality is males have done it since time, and sadly the only way to not be perved on is be aware it is happening and dress differently. I know this will bring all the 'but we should be able to wear what we want' brigade out. And you of course are entirely right. But being right will not stop it from happening.

The leggings are awful. I was standing behind a young lady in the supermarket last week and she was wearing these second skin leggings. They were hugging her so intimately they were practically giving her a colonoscopy.

That's why dad's of daughters don't usually worry about saying NAMALT, not offending men, saying of course it's only a tiny number. They know.

Seriously!!
young men have hormones too. Are you suggesting they would want to attack the young girls just because they find them distracting

I was about to chip in to agree with the OP, but then I remembered that, almost 4 decades ago aged 15, at my pretty sedate girl's school, we put on a racey rendition of Time Warp from the Rocky Horror Picture show, much to all the teachers' horror.

much to all the teachers' horror.

Exactly! It's one thing when teenagers make a performance far more risqué than the teachers expected. (often deliberately). It's different when the teachers are signing of on, or even helping create the performance and think "yeah crotch thrusts, great idea kids".

Same!

Reminds me of the jinglebell rock scene in mean girls🤣

And it would be wrong if it didn't make the male teachers uncomfortable. A grown man SHOULD want to look away from teenage girls gyrating in hotpants to a beyonce song.

Where did I suggest that?
The point is that clothes shaming can be the start of a slippery slope to victim blaming.

Time for some of you to go for your nanna nap

odfod

No, men have not viewed bodies as a whole as sexual for all time

Society has encouraged certain aspects of the body to be seen as overtly sexual. What these aspects are have changed over time. And change by location. For example, there are African countries where women walk around bare breasted because breasts are seen as examples of femininity and motherhood, not sexual objects.

I went to a primary school
fete at the weekend. They had a cheerleading troupe on doing a demo to the most inappropriate music, which included the line “I don’t need an umbrella; I stand under miniskirts”. What the actual.

Be glad your not a female tribal girl anywhere in Africa. If you think they have any less sexual advances than the 'civilised' world. They also undergo barbarity in the name of tradition that we in the west rightly condemn. Think FGM.

Sounds like generalising a whole continent there...

I don't think that there was anything less sexy than a bunch of 14 year olds in stockings and suspenders at our school performing Cabaret.
That said, I was the same age and not really comprehending what some of the older male teachers/audience were thinking. I hope most were cringing too.

I look back to gymnastics at primary - the split leg, hold your feet roll. It couldn't be any more inappropriate in a leotard. You'd hope most people would view it as perfectly innocent, but there'll always be one or two.

Dancing now is very sexualised, but no more than cheerleaders who are supposed to look wholesome lol.

It's just how it's perceived and who by. My daughter was getting wolf whistled when she was 12. I was straight mouthing paedo at whatever bloke in whatever van it was... Sickening.

I'm rambling on - apologies!

What absolute rubbish. Some women dress in what they feel attractive in not what they think men will find attractive . Is that so hard to understand? Women can choose to allow people to objectify their bodies if they wish ….. it’s called consent

Surely the whole point is we have an age of consent for a reason. And a time and a place for it too. Displays of sexuality are not appropriate on a school stage. I get there's a grey area as to where to draw the line but surely you agree with the basic premise? Are you suggesting we allow a strip tease, because the kids wanted to do it?