Parents call it dirty dancing; kids say it's no big deal

The girl, wearing a too-short skirt, flips it up and then backs up into her dance partner's crotch — moving and bouncing to the music.

On another part of the dance floor, three girls bump and grind to the thumping bass. Boys rush to join in, grabbing the girls by the waist, matching their gyrations and leaving no space in between them.

Ybor City? Girls gone wild?

No, it's the high school cafeteria.

Tammy Earl reached out to fellow parents with these descriptions after chaperoning her daughter's Bloomingdale High homecoming dance this month. The bumping and grinding performed by the students left her detailing the scene to friends with a "sick and sad heart."

"To me, they were simulating sex," Earl told me last week. "The girls are more aggressive, offering themselves up. Sometimes it's girls dancing with girls or girls dancing with guys. It doesn't seem to matter.

"They just hump to the music."

Understand, we're not singling Bloomingdale out. By most accounts, this flip-it-up, shake-it, rub-it-down style is standard fare across the bay area at most public and private high schools. And middle schools.

I'm less than amused with thoughts of my own teenage sons "booty dancing" because I'm not interested in anything that could lead to me to becoming a grandfather at the age of 45.

"A lot of this has to do with the environment they're exposed to," Earl said. "They're seeing so many things media-wise. They may know the physical side of sex, but they don't know the consequences.

"They don't realize what they're doing."

It sounds like the 6-foot ordinance needs to be moved from adult establishments to the prom.

Yet what we parents see as inappropriate, the kids see as normal fun. My own sons insist it's no big deal, and other teens I talked to swear that parents like Earl and me are overreacting.

"As a recent graduate with many school dances under my belt, I think it's just the way we know how to dance, and there aren't any bad intentions," said Erica Hartmann, Brandon High Class of 2009.

"If you trust your kids, they are probably just dancing. Most people keep it PG-13 out there."

So am I right to be concerned, or am I just an aging dad who has fallen behind the times? I keep wondering if I've become the Rev. Shaw Moore, the overbearing minister in Footloose who banned dancing.

The challenge lies amid these twisted emotions. As a teen, I swore I would never be this parent. I promised I would be the hip father who remembered the growing pains of adolescence.

I guess I lied.

But I'm not ready to ban dancing in Hillsborough County or get a yardstick and whack kids every time they get too close. That's not the answer, and neither is trying to enforce stringent rules. Condemnation didn't work when parents broke vinyl records and decried rock music as satanic, and it's not going to work with these new rebels with a cause.

Curbing the behavior won't matter if you don't change attitudes.

Solutions lie in conversations. At the core of the debate is the age-old divide between kids and parents — two groups that may seldom see eye to eye. We have to share our perspective as parents and hope guidance will inspire them to raise the bar.

We have to talk about the differences.

We see their bump-and-grind groove as over the top; they see it as just having fun. We say such behavior can lead to true sex acts; they say it's too informal to hold any meaning beyond simple partying.<