Fosse! Fosse! Fosse!

My daughter has been doing competitive dance for the last few years. The first competition was quite an eye opener. There are point scores, best in each category, division, and even judges’ awards.  Everywhere you look, there are girls in enough makeup to make a drag queen jealous and enough glitter, sparkles, and bling that sunglasses are required indoors. My daughter, who may wear Chapstick on a good day has become an expert at wearing false eyelashes. It’s all very overwhelming. It is not, however, Dance Moms. Put that out of your head. These girls practice one dance, with one costume for months at a time. They don’t have suitcases that turn into fully-lit makeup mirrors. Instead, most of them have the family suitcase outfitted with some contraption made out of PVC pipe to hold all their clothes. They have teachers who love them and emphasizes substance over style.  The parents support one another. At least that is what it’s like at her dance school. I can’t speak for others.

Last year, the costumes at competition were very risqué. Lots and lots of nudes, cut outs, and S&M wear - for tweens. I watched a child perform an exquisite ballet to Amazing Grace while wearing a vibrant red costume with nude patches over her genitals. The under-ten set embraced cut outs to show off their abs, but mostly just showed off their rib cages. This year, the costumes were very different. Gone were all the straps, leather, and nude patches that made the dancers look like the world’s tiniest people performing the world’s oldest profession. This year's overall theme seemed to be stripped instead of stripper. Instead of elaborate costumes in bright colors, we saw a lot of sack clothes in muted earth tones. Buns were out, braids were in. There were still lots of outfits you could consider pajamas, but instead of lingerie, they were closer to night gowns. One entire category of modern dance looked like the girls were acting out scenes from a play set during the 1930s Dust Bowl. Who knew they made so many shades of dirt brown? Flesh tone was also a big hit. I saw girls practicing in what could best be described as a nude bikini with nude mesh over top and was curious to see the rest of their costume. Turns out, there was no “rest” of the costume. That WAS the costume! With prop canes! I’m so bummed I missed that performance because I was dying to know what song required canes but not clothing? Our girls, in comparison looked like Mormons. They wore layers - nude leotards, nude tights, then fishnets, then their costumes. In terms of dance wear, they were dressed for winter in New Hampshire while the rest of the teams were on Spring Break in the Bahamas.  

The music was similarly stripped down. There were so many muzak versions of songs that I wondered if I was trapped in the world’s loudest elevator. Every song has one instrument and one vocal. Or no vocals and all instrumental. I spent half my time desperately trying to name that tune because the venue had no wi-fi so I couldn’t use Spotify to save myself from going crazy. Did you know that there are slow, instrumental versions of Depeche Mode? I wish I didn't. 

The worst part of competition is not watching my kid dance and get judged, which is super difficult, but keeping my eyes averted in the open dressing rooms. I obviously don’t want to see any part of anyone I didn’t help bring into this world, but its not that easy. I reached down to get my phone out of my purse, and when I sat back up, I was eye-to-thong with a dancer from the next company over. I heard the unmistakable sound of tape ripping and looked up in time to try not to see a teenager taping her breasts down. With masking tape! She held them up while two others taped them down and dear God, you know that stung when she had to rip it off later.

I know that judging is subjective and that its all relative to how many kids in each category and a host of other factors. So I’m not even going to touch upon that. What I do find most perplexing are the songs and themes chosen by the dance instructors. Last year, there was a song about drowned brides and another about dead babies. This year, we got a song about murder (complete with the onstage death), dead dolls, a funeral, zombies, and, I kid you not, an anti-Korean war song with a prop Army coat! There was a relatively brilliant song about depression where the major emotions all wore bright colored body suits and the rest of the team all wore black. There was a showstopper about the backstabbing inherent in a royal court that had the kids literally flinging themselves at each other and then there was the dance that won the crowd award. Reader, I was NOT happy with that last one.

The song was Can’t Stop the Feeling. Fucking Justin Timberlake! Again! The theme was “Night at the Museum” wherein a janitor starts playing that dreaded song and all the statues come to life. Each dancer had on a different costume. There was a Wonder Woman, a Blonde Ambition-era Madonna, Elvis, etc. (There was also a waitress, which I found odd, but I digress.) But I didn’t understand why the black girl was dressed as Marilyn Monroe. Why not let the black girl be Tina Turner or Whitney Houston or any number of famous black women performers? In fact, why make any of the girls into men? Couldn’t the song celebrate strong women of all colors? Did it need an Elvis or a Michael Jackson? Does anyone really think Prince is rising from the dead to dance to Justin Timberlake? Now, its possible that after three days of competition, I was just tired and cranky and hungry so that I was more annoyed than usual, but I think my point is fair. (Also, what museum was he IN, anyway?)

Overall, I’m glad the weekend is over. I watched roughly 24 hours of dancing over the course of 48 hours and my brain was turning into mush. My butt hurt from sitting, my ears hurt from the music, and my head was pounding from watching people spin over and over and over again. Thank God I have six weeks to recover before the next one and I can only applaud those parents who do this every single weekend and thank both the olds gods and the new that I am not one of them.

I've Got This Feeling Inside My Bones

I cannot stand Justin Timberlake. My reasons are far ranging and many. Last night, I complained about him on Facebook and Etsy requested a blog post about it. So, in no particular order, the top ten reasons I hate Justin Timberlake:

1 – His voice. He sings at a pitch that only dogs can hear. When his balls drop and he can sing a register below castrato, let me know and I’ll give him a listen. Until that time, please tell him that his version of sexy has been marked return to sender. He can’t bring back what he never had. Also, Can’t Stop the Feeling is an ear worm of a song, but that doesn’t make it good.

2 – Britney. She cheated on him, he cheated on her, whatever, but it all happened 15 years ago so would he please STOP invoking her name in interviews. He has been in the spotlight a long time – he knows that when he mentions her, it becomes the pull quote.  You are now a grown ass man with a family – she is a respected performer with mental health issues. Take her name outta your mouth! Don’t sing about her, don’t make videos about her, don’t make fun of her, and don’t talk about her.

3 – His wedding photos. Yes, I clearly said “his” not “theirs” because based on the photos they chose to release on the cover of the most popular entertainment magazine in the country, the wedding was all about him. Their official photo had her seated on the floor, her dress puddled up around her, her flowers casually held in one hand – looking all the world like a bored bridesmaid taking a breather after a long day. What is Justin doing? Jumping like a tuxedoed monkey on a trampoline. His feet are at her eye level. If you moved his photo more to the left, and hers more to the right, he would be perched on her shoulders, hands outstretched, screaming “me me me.” Sit. DOWN. Stand next to your wife, not above her.

4 – His acting career. He can’t act. No. Please don’t argue. Go back and watch any one of movies. He telegraphs every move he is about to make in advance. You can practically see him practicing the words in his head before he says them. His eyes are always blank. He is overshadowed by every other actor in his scenes. He is always Justin Timberlake. It is why he is so good on SNL and so awful anywhere else – he works so hard at being himself that he can’t possible figure out how to be anyone else.

5 – How he treats his wife. I actually have nothing against Jessica Biel. She has to live with that dumb bastard, so all the power to her, but I’ve never seen a husband step on a wife so much in interviews. The drill is simple: when a celebrity husband and wife walk the red carpet, the attention is supposed to be focused on whichever one has a project to promote. If the carpet is for her, then he is supposed to be quiet and supportive and vice versa. Not JT. He makes every carpet about him. She was nominated for her first ever Golden Globe this year. That’s a big deal to actors. So what did he do? He released news about new album two days before the award show. Guess what happened? Every interview became about him and his music instead of her and her acting. He could have released that information the day AFTER the Globes. It still would have received plenty of media coverage. But no, he had to take her spotlight and shine it on himself. He had to put her in his shadow because his ego can’t stand being in hers. When she has photo calls, he jumps around in the background making bunny ears with his fingers and all sorts of juvenile nonsense. That poor woman.

6 – His thirst. While I obviously cannot stand his music, others do not agree and he has been nominated for and won several major awards. And let me tell you, he works for those nominations. He promoted that damn Trolls movie so far in advance that by the time it came out, the target audience of toddlers had graduated college. When The Social Network was in theaters, it received many Best Ensemble awards. He was one of many and his performance as Sean Parker was basically him just playing an asshole, which is hardly out of his comfort zone. Yet he strutted through those press screenings as if he were the male lead. He actively campaigned for award nominations. The entire movie was about a bunch of dicks arguing over who was the biggest dick of them all and Justin was basically holding a thumb, but that didn’t stop him from thinking he had a chance in that particular pissing contest.  

7 – He (allegedly) cheats. A man who cheats on a woman is dead to me.

8 – Super Bowl 52. The big game was played in Minnesota, home to the dearly departed Prince - a legendary performer who has gone on record stating that he believed artist holograms are demonic. Rumor had it that Justin was going to play “with” Prince via hologram until that information leaked and Prince fans went batshit. Instead, he included a video projection of Prince and sang along. Toe-may-toe. Toe-mah-toe. Prince had more sexy in his elfin toes than JT has in his whole friggin’ body. Prince knew who he was. He didn’t change his aesthetic with his albums like SOMONE who performed during the half-time show. Man of the woods my left butt cheek! Justin Timberlake is the target audience for glamping. He is only capable of eating artisanal meats and cruelty-free marshmallows. The fact that his carefully distressed, quasi-camouflage outfit was head-to-toe couture only makes his lack of irony even more pronounced. While the crowd seemed to enjoy the performance, the Twitterverse proved via video clips that the paid performers on the floor were enthusiastically clapping along while the rest of the stadium remained oddly quiet.

9  - His hair. He is a human Chia pet. No amount of straightener is going to make me forget that he has a glorious head full of pre-Ralphaelite curls.   

10 -  Nipplegate -  Justin Timberlake ripped off Janet Jackson’s bodice exposing her breast and pierced nipple for half a second during the halftime show of the Super Bowl. It was the most DVR’d moment in history as people rewound it over and over again in order to properly see what was so indecent. That moment basically led to the rise of YouTube and almost broke the Internet. But let’s be clear. HE ripped HER clothing. HE exposed HER breast. HE made the mistake in removing both layers of her clothing when he was only supposed to remove one. HE did it. Which performer was forced to apologize for the incident, though? Janet Jackson. Which one was fined for indecency? Janet Jackson. Which performer had their music blacklisted? Janet Jackson. Which performer was banned from the Grammy Awards that year? Janet Jackson. But which performer actually made the mistake? Justin Fucking Timberlake. Which performer walked away completely unscathed? Justin Fucking Timberlake. Only one performer saw their career almost come to an end and it was the victim! What exactly did she do wrong? Hire the wrong seamstress? She didn’t rip it off herself. That was the ONE time he should have jumped up to say “ me me me.” That was the ONE time he was supposed to step in front of a woman and speak. That was the ONE time he needed to act. The ONE time he needed to whet his thirst for attention by telling every media outlet, talk show host, and magazine that the mistake was his and his alone. But he didn’t. He said nothing. He did nothing. Don’t tell me that he supports the Times Up initiative. His actions toward her and the media circus that surrounded that performance showed exactly who he was. And as Maya Angelou famously stated, “when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”