Last year, a video of scantily clad seven year old girls gyrating (rather expertly) to Single Ladies at a dance competition went viral on YouTube. They were dressed in what amounted to sequined lingerie with thigh-high stockings and bounced around the stage in a high-octane Rated R dance number. Well, it turns out kids are wearing costumes like this at most dance competitions and the moves, which I’d be embarrassed to do alone in my bedroom drunk, were totally norm in the land of Junior Miss Starquests. Well, the internet was not having it! And dance competitions, which managed to stay way under the radar compared to child beauty pageants, hit the map.
As would be expected, Lifetime took notice and created their new reality TV series Dance Moms, which combines their two favorite things “moms” and “suburban scandal”. Now, I am totally a fan of Lifetime at its most dysfunctional, I’m a full-fledged Toddlers & Tiaras addict, and I used to compete in dance competitions, so I was pretty stoked for this. But having watched two episodes so far, I imagine the pitch meeting for this show boiled down to “Real Housewives meets Toddlers & Tiaras.” Eeks.
In what I surmise is a scripted scenario, each of the moms of the elite junior dance team of Abby Lee Miller’s Dance Company happens to have six hours of every day open to watch their kids grande jete from behind a glass wall. Um, yeah, I’ve met my share of crazy stage moms, and I don’t know a single one who would have the patience nor time for this level of obsession, so I’ve already checked out in the believability category. Plus many of these moms have jobs and other kids, whom I guess we’re supposed to believe are all in carpools… both ways?… While this entire premise seems manufactured to me, I do get that it’s an affordable way to get all the series moms in a confined room with one crew. And hey, they’ve got Abby Lee Miller as the perfect reality TV dictator with pearls of dance wisdom like “those legs are about as straight as Elton John,” so I figure it’s still worth sticking around a little.
Then they move straight to the cray-cray. in the first episode alone, we get several crying fits, a pushy stage mom with a totally detached child, a call to the police, and a pair of gorgeous, rich and belligerently drunk moms trash-talking their kid’s coach while accidentally burning a child with their curling iron. Then their little gems lose for the first time ever, and we get the one trashy component we’ve been missing: a cat-fight. Oh marone. Where do you even go from there? It’s not like we’ll be introduced to another set of nuts in the next episode like on Toddlers & Tiaras. We’re stuck with this crew all season. How much crazier and trashier can these gals get?
Onto episode 2! No time is wasted before Abby is throwing an inappropriately sexy costume on her 9 year old stars, while their moms are forced to apply the rhinestones. I imagine a glue gun was held to their head?… Now hold onto your mouses… it is the EXACT same costume that the little scandalized dancers wore on YouTube. A-ha! YouTube clearly played a big role in getting this show greenlit. The power of a viral. Hmm, I wonder why they didn’t just get the original kids and their moms on this show… but I digress.
What is even sillier is that while the dance moms are “aghast” at this “scandalous” costume, they are perfectly fine with their daughters running around in bootie shorts and midriff-baring sports bras. Huh?! Also, what dance teacher would be so unflinchingly crazy that she would force tween students to wear sexually provocative costumes against their parents’ will? No one who expects to keep their school legally open for business, which is why this show is driving me absolutely nuts!!!
Let’s hope these dance moms at least have their $20,000 per year dance bill covered now, and their talented children’s reputations are not tarnished forever.
Dance Moms airs on Lifetime Wednesday nights, and here’s the video of the original YouTube girls. I find them to be hilarious, but you be the judge.
DARYN
I completely agree with you on this whole article. The girls are amazing dancers and Abby Lee IS a little over the top but she makes these girls unbelievable. However, no mother has a cat fight with the director of a dance studio without some coercion. And all of the moms seem to have their own dramatic characteristic. Abby Lee is making the girls star dancers and actresses but it’s the moms that belong on Broadway.
The show is a joke. It is so obvious that it is scripted. I just can’t believe they make their kids a part of it all – very sad.
i do dont believe “reality” shows all are scrip shows and most of this shows are just that shows, you have to be stupid to believe all that happened on real life. I dont understand why people like this show is only women screaming and cursing at eachother, if you notice this little girls have being in shows like maddy is in disney and the others ones are doing dancing videos brooke is a model for justice catalogs so how this kids do all that work in videos modeling plus school and at the same time they are in this “reallity” show??? the answer is because this is a scripted show like all reallity show on tv is just a planned circus, that is all but is real life is sad to know there are mothers who dont have a problem to put makeup and dress they kids like little hookers.