Living Behind the Dance Floor: Dance Moms

We still can’t get enough of fighty moms and crying children on tv. My sister invited G and me, well, really just G, but since she can’t drive yet, I was a necessary addition to watch the reunion of Dance Moms. So, as requested, I picked G up from dance, and we headed over to my sisters to watch a room full of traumatized young women relive their experiences as the country watched their parents act like catty teenagers while they were exploited both by a TV show and an increasingly power-mad teacher. I was never the target demographic for this show when it came out. As an elder millennial, I was both too old to be in the kid’s shoes and too young to understand the moms. My sister, on the other hand, is 11 years younger than me and was deep in the throes of her childhood competitive gymnastics days, and gym parents are not too dissimilar from dance moms, it turns out. (Choir, my activity of choice, was not really all that crazy.) She was an avid viewer and I picked up a little here and there.

Then, in 2010, I became a mom for the first time to G, and she, despite being birthed from the loins of a woman who could hit a softball well into the outfield and still get out at first turned out to be something of an athletic child. She is a competitive dancer herself, and I, much to my terror at times, am a dance mom. Lowercase, of course. We stumbled through the first years of competitions as I struggled to create flyaway-free hairstyles and stage-perfect makeup. She walked out of the hotels and our trash-filled van like a movie star while I looked like a cave gremlin. There is only so much time, and only one of us is being judged… formally… on our appearance. As the years rolled on, I learned about the importance of butt glue, an essential tool in any dancer’s bag, and boob covers that more closely resemble chicken cutlets. Overall, I think I’ve caught on, but every day holds the possibility of some new and terrifying surprise requirement. (We recently added costume tape. And Nerds Clusters.)

Unlike on Dance Moms, capital this time, there is rarely any crazy behind-the-scenes mom drama, but I have seen things get wild. Usually, this is because the venue has sent 400 girls into a room with giant costume rack bags designed to hold only 50. Girls are running around swapping costumes and hair pieces, and some poor kid is on the floor, seven feet kicking her in the face while she tries to apply false eyelashes and waves glue near her sensitive eyes. Then there are girls on stage in ill-conceived feather costumes, shedding feathers and slowly looking more like plucked chickens, flipping through the air, and the viewers are holding their breath, hoping no one slips on a feather and ends up in a neck brace.

Being a dance mom, back to lowercase, is a harrowing and very expensive adventure that you take with your kid. I can’t imagine doing it in front of an audience. I wouldn’t change it for anything. It has taught me a lot about my daughter and about me. There is nothing like watching your kid shine in a custom-made pink costume that you may or may not have accidentally glued to her as you added the rhinestones. But damn if she doesn’t look great.