inappropriate cheer?

zaq

Sun, Jul 08 2012, 6:14 pm

DrMom wrote:

I guess I would only be concerned if there was some inappropriate choreography paired with the cheer. That could easily turn some innocent or ambiguous wording into something inappropriate.

Exactly. It's all in the context. let innocent girls have their innocent cheers. with the right choreography, meaning the wrong choreography, you can turn the Bnos anthem into something suggestive:

We're so glad
we can say
we climb HIGHER every day
with bnos agudas yisroel....

Aaaack! They're doing drugs in bnos! who knew!

naturalmom5

Sun, Jul 08 2012, 7:50 pm

This thread reminds me of a full page in a Lakewood BP mag. It was a shoestore, that had a picture of a lady's leg below the knee with a dressy shoe. The big caption on top of the page was "HUNGRY???", as in are you hungry for a good sale..
My husband saw it and screamed ** ya.. I called the store and told them that maybe this ad should only be in a lady's only magazine. LOL

Fox

Sun, Jul 08 2012, 8:26 pm

This is one of those rock-and-a-hard-place conundrums. If we are committed to sheltering our kids from the highly s-xualized content of the secular world, we cannot them be shocked when they use words or expressions associated with double-entendres. That's not fair!

Even my teenagers, who are somewhat more worldly than ideal, would not immediately think of "hot" in of s-xual terms. Rather, they would use it to mean "attractive" or "cute," as in, "She thinks she's really hot." I suppose you could argue that "attractive" or "cute" has s-xualized meaning within our society, but that's the basis for a doctoral dissertation, not a way to evaluate cheers.

As for "whip it up," I've never heard of that used with any double-meaning, so maybe I'm the one who's out of touch.

I'm with Marina: the cheers that feature put-downs are far more Jewishly problematic than girls possibly cheering themselves for being s-xually appealing.

But my perspective may be skewed, having gone to a university with a then-noteworthy losing football team. Whenever a touchdown was made by the other team, the cheer was, "That's alright; that's okay. You're going to work for us someday!"

Dandelion1

Sun, Jul 08 2012, 9:11 pm

I am all for letting it go, as I said earlier I am sure it was chosen in complete innocence. But I find the double entendre in "we're hot, we'll show 'em what we've got" to be fairly pronounced. I am glad that our dcs don't get that, but you can be sure in a more secular environment this cheer would be delivered with some awareness of this. Regardless of the multiple meanings, this combo of slang usage just has a trashy feel to it. Ultimately, being "hot" in any capacity and "showing 'them' what we've got" is just not a message or value we typically impart to young frum girls....

Merrymom

Mon, Jul 09 2012, 12:55 am

Omg, some of you are so last century. Is there actually someone walking around alive today that doesn't know in what context "hot" is used when describing a person shock

? This word is muttered by my teenaged girls to each other when they see a cute boy, and no they don't mean he's an erliche boy with nice skin (harry potter anyone?). Have none of you been around teenagers lately? It's a different generation and hot is not an acceptable word for your daughters to be chanting when describing themselves. I also had a cow when my daughters came home singing "my hips are shaking". Do you not know what dirty dancing is and what this connotates? Even if your children mean this in all innocence doesn't make it o.k. Same with saying "Oh, that s*cks", that's another obscene word that BY girls have no clue about and quite frankly it's disturbing. If anyone hears your child talking like this from a secular background, it is a tremendous chilul Hashem. Call the camp and complain. If enough parents call you can change things!

marina

Mon, Jul 09 2012, 1:23 am

A very, very small percentage of people who use the term "it sucks" know what this originally meant. I only know because our high school principal clarified once.

As for your post, I totally fail to understand what the problem is with people using words innocently. If they don't know what it means, who cares, especially if the term carried the connotation ages ago or does so for only a fraction of people AND the audience doesn't know about the connotation either?

UrbanDictionary.com is a good example of this. There are many, many words and phrases that have some odd slang meaning among a certain population, and Urban Dictionary collects them all. If we all stop using those terms, the world will fall silent.

Example: Eat Breakfast is apparently a code word for pleasuring. Look it up on that site. Remember that tomorrow morning when you ask your kids if they've eaten breakfast yet, Merrymom.

ok, maybe you should just ask them if they have already consumed the morning victuals.

Merrymom

Mon, Jul 09 2012, 12:16 pm

marina wrote:

The problem is that others hear it too. from non jewish staff to visitors at the camp, or in my case one day in the mall whem my then little girls started singing this cheer in public. Do we say this cheer is ok when you're here but not there?

marina

Mon, Jul 09 2012, 12:38 pm

It really depends on to what extent the term is used with inappropriate connotations. Eating breakfast is widely interpreted as.... eating breakfast and nothing else. The fact that a minority of people will read something else into it doesn't matter.

Likewise with hot. Hot generally means awesome, like cool. In some contexts hot is s-xual. But so is whipped cream Smile

amother

Mon, Jul 09 2012, 12:45 pm

marina wrote:

Whipped cream is always s-xual. Heh heh.

Merrymom

Mon, Jul 09 2012, 1:07 pm

marina wrote:

You know I don't understand the resistance. If your daughter came home one day singing "shag my _" and had no idea what she was saying would you not call the camp and complain? Would you say she's just talking about shaking out the carpets? If it's inappropriate half the time it's still inappropriate.

Fox

Mon, Jul 09 2012, 1:56 pm

Merrymom wrote:

Omg, some of you are so last century.

Correct!

And some of us are even so the century before that!

You can't have it both ways: if you shelter your kids even somewhat from the hyper-s-xualized culture that surrounds us, they will innocently use phrases and expressions that have inappropriate double-meanings.

The question is how you respond to these sometimes hilarious references. Does anyone really want to explain to her 7-year-old why she shouldn't say, "eat breakfast"?

I hear teenage girls use the word "hot" to refer to boys quite frequently, and you are correct -- it is not about their middos or good skin. However, the girls are not really thinking in any explicit way about s-x, either. They're processing general appeal. Yes, there is a s-xual component to that, but it's comparatively coy and innocent.

Back in the middle of the last century, appealing boys were designated as "cute." It had nothing to do with the ratio of their eyes to the length of their noses (the way a plastic surgeon would define "cuteness") or even their neotanous charm. It was about their general appeal, which most definitely included a s-xual component. But I can assure you when a 15-year-old girl said, "Oh, Peter Frampton is just so cute," she wasn't really thinking about s-x in any meaningful way.

Like Marina says, if it's something that uses inappropriate single-entendre words, abbreviations, or substitutes, then it's time to clarify that it is not okay. For example, my son came home with a little cheer/ditty that included the line, "what the ef . . ." I put an end to that right away; explained why; and he was a little embarrassed -- he'd had absolutely no idea what he was saying. To clarify, this was not something he'd been taught by a counselor, etc. -- it came from the 12-year-old boy underground.

But "hot" and "whip it" don't get me so hot or whipped up.

HindaRochel

Mon, Jul 09 2012, 2:38 pm

There are a plethora of words in the English language that can mean a variety of things depending on how we use them. If one can't sing "I'm so witty and gay..." without everyone assuming that the singer is a homosεxual, well that is sad.

Certainly word meaning changes. Girl for instance. But hot has not become standardized to have one meaning. When it does, then the cheer will be inappropriate.

But if the weather is hot, I doubt people are thinking of having an altogether strange and final communion with the sun.

Della

Mon, Jul 09 2012, 9:52 pm

I thought it was from the 70's (could've sworn that I danced to it in 6th grade...)

Wiki says:
Boogie-woogie is a style of piano-based blues that became popular in the late 1930s and early 1940s, but originated much earlier, and was extended from piano, to three pianos at once, guitar, big band, and country and western music, and even gospel

Do people really have that much free time to complain about camp cheers? Really??

amother

Mon, Jul 09 2012, 10:14 pm

I wouldn't make an issue of it. Especially since the kids themselves have no clue what they're saying and will forget about it eventually.
When I was in camp we had all these kind of cheers and hand slapping games that I think back to now and wonder what my parents thought when I sang them. Anyone remember them?
"Boys boys have some fun, here comes sally with her raincoat on,..." Don't remember the rest but that alone is not too great.
What about that pretty little dutchgirl song.. "all the boys around my block go crazy over me me me, my boyfriends name is Chaim, he comes from yerushalayim....One day when I was walking I saw my boyfriend talking to a pretty little girl with strawberry curls and this is what he said to her..I l-o-v-e you I k-I-s-s you...I jumped into the lake..." That song was really popular in my days. Though it wasn't necessarily a cheer made by the camp, just a song we all sang. But still.
But my point is that I had no clue what I was saying. Neither did most other girls. Just thought it was a cute song.
Can't remember this whole song but I do recall this one part. You say "look at these" and point to your breasts.. Surprised

I can't believe the things we sang.. embarrassed

Am I the only one that used to sing these?