Response by Emily Hunter: It is a Saturday night around 12 pm on campus and most students are heading to the dance intoxicated and hoping to “bump” into someone they might be interested in going home with. When you step into the 1962 room, you are no longer at college, but instead have entered into the Dream World. As the music plays, girls dance provocatively, making eye contact with men inviting them to come dance behind them or at least to watch as they bend seductively and stroke their bodies with their hands. In this Dream world any man can approach a girl from behind and begin to dance, thrust their hips, and place their hands where they wish. If the guy is lucky, the girl’s friends will dance around him and his partner, increasing the number of girls that surround him. He may even be lucky enough to dance with two or three girls at a time. If, for some reason, a girl doesn’t care to dance with the man, she must forcefully remove herself from his grip and may even need to exit the room in order to make it clear she does not care to be touched. The dream world not only exists in music videos, but is acted out every weekend on this very campus.
The dances held every weekend provide a perfect example as to how the dream world seen in music videos incorporates itself into the life of young adults across the United States. In a dance, women are no longer appreciated for their intelligent comments in class, their determination on the sports field, or for the number of student government positions they hold on campus. Instead the girls are seen as the “ass” that is grinding against a guy, the breasts that are hanging out of a skin tight top, or the legs that appear thin and long in high heels. Men enter the dance knowing the girls hope to be looked upon by them and that within the dance they have the right to do what they want with the girls. Not only do the dances themselves provide a sexual experience for the men, but by acquiring a girl at the dance, a man can almost guarantee he will be enjoying a sexual experience back in his dorm room later that evening, if not on the dance floor itself. And yet, people may ask, “What is wrong with this? It appears the women are inviting the men’s action. Do they not want it?” While some girls embrace this dream world culture, many do not. I cannot count the number of times I have had to rescue friends who have been handled inappropriately in dances, dragging them away as the guy tries to hold onto the girl. This challenge between males dominating females and girls trying desperately to escape appears similar to the footage of the Puerto Rican Day Parade in Central Park. It may appear that the Dream World seen in music videos is only a male fantasy, but I would argue this so called “Dream World” is actually a reality for most men in college and a nightmare for most women.
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