Sex, Swing, and Stereotypes

I don’t like to grind. Neither do I really enjoy “bumping” with boys on the dance-floor. Of course there have been more than several situations when saying no to getting down seemed impossible and when I felt forced to step in the name of love, but I won’t deny my accompanying discomfort or my subsequent disgust. Who doesn’t feel slightly embarrassed pressed up against their partner, hands stuck to a sweaty back, and onlookers watching on with slight disdain?

Dancing today, if you can call it that, has become so mortifying even the semantics make me cringe. Grinding sounds like factory lingo, the month before MCATs, or an ancient activity involving maize. Bumping reminds me of a carnival ride or a skin disease, both of which I’d prefer not to associate with romance.

Most boys, on the other hand, find grinding the preferred dance of choice. It requires little coordination and negates the possibility of—God forbid!—real conversation. As soon as Kanye starts requesting pre-nups, a pack of males, like Pavlovian predators, begin to peruse the room and claw at the nearest female. They then proceed to literally bruise pelvises with a sometimes circular, more often directionless, hip-knocking motion. And if you’re the taller of the pair—at 5’ 10’’ wearing heels, I almost always am—not only are you left with black and blues, but tired quads and achy knees. Sounds more like running stadiums than dancing to reggaeton.

Perhaps I was spoiled by a finger-snapping father who pulled my sisters and I onto the dance-floor as soon as “Mac the Knife” began to play, by my party-loving mother who taught us each how to fox-trot at an early age, or by my grandparents, Kathryn and Arthur Murray, who spawned a generation of jitter-bugging, tango-lovin’ dancers during the Depression. The Murrays built a successful franchise of teaching studios and later brought ballroom to the masses through television, erasing the class signifiers that had accompanied certain dance steps. At the beginning of their program, immediately following a live advertisement for Newports, Alkaseltzer, or the like, my grandmother would glide onto the stage—SNL style—perform a short monologue and encourage her audience: “Add a little fun in your life: try dancing.” I have a sneaking suspicion she wouldn’t approve of her descendents giving up the classics to “drop it like it’s hot” instead.

To cure us of our crudeness, she’d most likely prescribe…lessons. And a few students on campus are heeding her advice. Several members of the mens’ lacrosse team have been secretly learning salsa on Thursday nights, and I recently overheard a group of football linebackers scheduling their next swing class in hushed tones. But there’s no need to hide your latest hobby, boys, since there won’t be much to laugh at when you’re soon lucking out with the ladies, no “Ignition Remix” required.

But turning Fred Flintstones into Fred Astaires won’t solve all of our problems,.I was taken aback a few weekends ago when after impressively spinning me to Brian Setzer Orchestra, my partner asked whether I wanted to lead for a song or two. I laughed at his joke, bit my lip upon noticing his seriousness, and admitted that I had no idea how to lead. Even when practicing with my older sister in our living room (we used to clear out the furniture and play the soundtrack from Flashdance), I always played the girl. It seems that after years of being advised to feel for his cues, follow a squeeze, and stay light on my feet, I honestly can’t be a boss in a world of tiled floors, disco balls, and “Brown-Eyed Girl.”

Part of me enjoys my dependence, his strong grip, the unplanned spin and sudden dip, rare twists for this normally type-A personality. But I also wonder if my complete inability to lead coupled with a demand for competent male dance partners points out a hypocrisy at the heart of my dancing dilemma. Are we girls contradicting ourselves by asking for both modern equality in life and old-school masculinity on the dance floor? Have most boys forgotten how to lead because society keeps telling men not to assume an upper hand?

Then perhaps “bumping and grinding” is the answer, however ironic, to this new-aged gender trouble. If you’ve ever seen two partners really “getting jiggy with it”—legs intertwined and faces covered—you’ve also noticed how difficult it is to distinguish the girl from the guy. So physically erotic, it’s apparently sexless. This type of dancing neither requires lessons nor calls for leaders. It’s equality at its best, free expression in the flesh, rhythmic recognition of our rights. Why then, does bumping and grinding still leave me feeling so wronged?

I may be the first to question chauvinism in the classroom and argue for fair treatment in the office, but it seems I’m constantly supporting old-fashioned gender roles in other spheres of my life—like the dance floor. so I must be requesting a return to the ballroom not in spite of the increasing blurriness between man and woman, but because of it. When faced with challenges to gender identity, I’d rather hide myself in the lindy-hop than surrender my sex. Instead of grinding, I simply want to be held like a girl, and rather than bump, I just want to be spun by a boy. Call me heteronormative, traditional, conservative too, but I believe that like Kathryn Murray said, we could all put a little fun in our lives and try dancing, her way.



Victoria Ilyinsky ’07 is a romance languages and literature concentrator in Leverett House. Her column appears on alternate Thursdays.