I Signed the Petition. Will You?

I met Mary Bawden through my editorial work. She is a delightful, interesting, and talented lady who's spent many years cultivating the beauty and glory of dance. She's shared a new project, a new concern of her with me . . . and now I am sharing it with you.

She's started a petition through change.org to tackle the alarming issue of sexualization of young girls in dance. This is what she has to say about the topic:

All of you know that I love dance on a deeply personal level. Dance is effective communication that transforms. Dance is powerful. Dance is beautiful…..

Over the course of the last decade, dance for young children, particularly little girls, has changed. Alarmingly, young girls are becoming increasingly sexualized through dance. If you have recently attended a dance recital or viewed any one of many reality shows on television, you have no doubt viewed choreography that exploits and sexualizes children, using sexy moves, adult costumes, and mature, sexually charged songs to make little girls look and act like mature women. 

This opinion is not just my own.  It is based on research that I have included on my website www.soultosolechoreography.org. When the beauty of dance is used to sexualize young children, it is a departure from its intended purpose. Because of this, I have decided to partner with ECPAT-USA and start a petition on change.org that brings education and awareness to  dance studios so that we can stop this trend.

ECPAT-USA, the leading policy organization fighting the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC), has agreed to support this petition. ECPAT-USA seeks to end the commercial sexual exploitation of children by raising awareness of the issue, advocating for the victims, developing policy for private companies, law enforcement, and government bodies to fight the problem; they also seek to pass legislation that protects the victims and penalizes the traffickers and exploiters. They are the leading policy organization in the United States in this area, and belong to an international network of organizations that have offices in 73 countries around the world. Learn more about ECPAT-USA atwww.ECPATUSA.org.

In addition to signing the petition, to make a difference at your local level, you can access an online toolkit from soultosolechoreography.org to start a hard copy petition in your own community. Together, we can facilitate change and bring an end to the sexualization of children under 12 through inappropriate choreography and costumes! I hope that you will join me in this effort by signing the petition onchange.org.

This is the petition link: http://www.change.org/petitions/dance-studios-stop-adult-sexual-choreography-and-costumes-for-girls-under-12

This is the link to the online toolkit: http://www.soultosolechoreography.org/toolkit/

This is the link to the FB business page where you can ‘like’ Soul to Sole Choreography and see updates on how the petition is doing: https://www.facebook.com/soultosolechoreography

I would particularly appreciate petition exposure over facebook with ‘likes’ to the soultosolechoreography.org business page.  As well, I hope that you might share this online petition with others so that there will be national awareness and education in this area.

If you have any questions, feel  free to e-mail me in regard to this issue:  Bawden5@cs.com ormary@soultosolechoreoraphy.org