Long Island Middle School Girls Gone Wild! (New York Times)

Back on December 29, 2006, in the Opinion/Editorial Observer section of the New York Times, Lawrence Downes wrote about “Middle School Girls Gone Wild”. In the essay, Downes wrote about a Long Island middle school talent show “where girls in teams of three or four” “in tiny skirts or tight shorts, with bare bellies, rouged cheeks and glittery eyes” performed “elaborately choreographed re-creations of music videos”.

Downes elaborated that while performing to Janet Jackson’s “All Nite (Don't Stop)” 2004, the middle school girls, to the cheers, whistles, and applause of their parents, would “writhe and strut, shake their bottoms, splay their legs, thrust their chests out and in and out again” while Jackson advised: "Don't stop, don't stop\Jerk it like you're making it choke (like that)”. Downes wrote:

They writhe and strut, shake their bottoms, splay their legs, thrust their chests out and in and out again. Some straddle empty chairs, like lap dancers without laps. They don't smile much. Their faces are locked from grim exertion, from all that leaping up and lying down without poles to hold onto. "Don't stop, don't stop," sings Janet Jackson, all whispery. "Jerk it like you're making it choke. Ohh. I'm so stimulated. Feel so X-rated." The girls spend a lot of time lying on the floor. They are in the sixth, seventh and eighth grades.

As each routine ends, parents and siblings cheer, whistle and applaud.

Here’s the complete chorus and some lyrics from Jackson’s “All Nite (Don't Stop)”, the schoolgirl’s song of choice:

Work it like you're working a pole

Shake it 'til you're shaking the floor

Pop it like you're popping a cork

Don't stop, don't stop

Jerk it like you're making it choke (like that)

Break it like you're breaking the code (like that)

Drop it 'til you're taking it lower (like that)

Drop it, drop it

So intoxicated

I'm so stimulated

Feel so X-Rated

In addition, Downes wrote: “The latest debate centers on whether simulated intercourse is an appropriate dance style for the high school gym.” However, I don't think there's a debate, because Downes related that, to his surprise, (secular) parents generally condone eroticized adolescence. Downes:

It is news to no one, not even me, that eroticism in popular culture is a 24-hour, all-you-can-eat buffet, and that many children in their early teens are filling up. 

What surprised me, though, was how completely parents of even younger girls seem to have gotten in step with society's march toward eroticized adolescence -- either willingly or through abject surrender. And if parents give up, what can a school do? 

Blush (2019)

In a bit of life imitating art and eroticized adolescence being displayed on school stages, take the film Blush (2019), which premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. One minute and forty-five seconds into the film, which was written and directed by Debra Eisenstadt, Cathy and Matthew went to Lincoln Middle School to see Tara, their 13-year-old daughter, and eight of Tara’s classmates perform in the Fall Fair performance.

Blush (2019)

And just like the Long Island schoolgirls, the Lincoln Middle schoolgirls writhed salaciously in shiny bra tops and tiny tight shorts while Tara’s dad smiled and nodded approvingly. 

Mean Girls (2024) | Talent Show

And in Mean Girls: The (Broadway) Musical and Mean Girls (2024) the film, during the Winter Talent Show, the high school girls writhed salaciously on North Shore High School’s stage.

Mean Girls: The Musical | Talent Show

Regina writhed so salaciously that her mini skirt fell onto the Broadway stage, revealing her black cheeky thong to the theatergoers.