When I was in the third grade, there was no slumber party contraband hotter than Dirty Dancing. Some girls in my class had parents who banned them from watching it. Other girls--the Dirty Dancing pushers, if you will--had parents who not only let them watch it, but willingly rented it for sleepover exhibition. Talk about badass! At any rate, by year's end, every single girl in the class had seen the movie at least half a dozen times. Now, normally I do not ascribe to the tantalizing, Althusserian notion that when a person watches a Hollywood movie, he or she soaks up its ideological poison like a sponge. But I make an exception when it comes to the reception of Dirty Dancing among pre-teen girls circa 1987-1988. That movie f***ed with our heads, man, and here's why: it propagated the idea that every girl deserves, nay, has the God-given right to find a man who can dance. More specifically, a man who can dance like Patrick Swayze.
After being indoctrinated with this fallacy at a young age, I entered my teen years outfitted with fantasies of having the time of my life practicing lifts in a lake at sunset, or mambo-ing into the spotlight with a dance partner every bit as talented (and looking every bit as hot in black polyester pants and a cummerbun) as Swayze's Johnny Castle.
Sadly, after a few junior high dances, the reality began to sink in that I'd been duped. Not only do very few men dance like Johnny Castle; the vast majority of men hate dancing, period. Except for spit-swapping slow songs, and the odd fool-proof, family- reunion- calibre standard (eg. "Y.M.C.A."...insert Sideshow Bob shudder...), most guys wouldn't get out on the dance floor unless their lives depended on it (as in, "Alright, we'll spare you--but only if you can shake it like Beyonce").
The worst part is, most guys I know think that not dancing is a good thing. For some bizarre reason, they think that not dancing and "looking cool" trumps making an effort and looking like a dork. But they're wrong! One need look no further than Patrick Dempsey's tour de force solo number in Can't Buy Me Love as evidence of the fact that it's all about the "E" for Effort when it comes to impressing girls on the dance floor.
There are, of course, guys who love to dance. However, they're in the minority as far as I can tell. And so it is that women the world over become harshly disillusioned in their quest to find the Patrick Swayze to their Jennifer Grey. And men take the blame for only doing what they honestly believe to be cool. Sigh. Why couldn't my friends' parents have just gone and rented friggin' Howard the Duck instead?
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