Valerie Strauss

With the new school year in full swing, school dances have begun in earnest. This can’t be what Patrick Swayze had in mind in “Dirty Dancing.”
For those of you fortunate enough not to have had experience with this yet, here’s what kids do today at many school dances (as well as at parties, formal and otherwise): They provocatively grind their pelvises into each other on the dance floor, sometimes standing face to face, sometimes with the boy behind the girl. It’s called grinding.
Sexually suggestive dancing was hardly invented by today’s kids. Young people say it is harmless fun, and sometimes it is.
But sometimes there is something more troubling going on: Boys often walk up to girls who don’t already have a boy thrusting his genitals at them and just start right up, no permission sought. Many girls, who even in the 21st century will do nearly anything to win a boy’s attention, allow them to go ahead without a word. Of course, there are some girls who initiate it themselves. That’s no better.
What this points to is the failure of many baby boomers to teach their daughters to respect themselves and their bodies and make their own choices, and to teach their sons to view women and girls as something other than sex objects.