And it was a bit distasteful for Taylor to crawl in between the girls’ legs while they were dancing. It sexualized an otherwise non-sexual video, but it can’t be ignored that twerking has a lot of potential to be sexual while most of the other dances have less. Again, twerking is about the butt, a widely sexualized body part.
But if having a black girl (among girls of other races) depicted as an expert in twerking (and interpretive dance and cheerleading and rhythmic gymnastics) is racist, then I’m getting lost on what racism means.
The girls are being shown as excellent dancers in all styles.
We’re focusing on one dance sequence out of seven because of the ‘emergence’ of twerking
in mainstream media. (Looking at you, Miley, and it’s not exactly in a positive light.) I won’t
say it’s not problematic that it sometimes takes white people to make parts of minority culture popular (some call this ‘Columbusing’), but I don’t think the video sends the message that Taylor
is trying to ‘popularize’ twerking or make it ‘acceptable’, nor ‘use’’ the dancers. Regardless, the end of the video is everyone dancing silly, with no regard to style or refinement. They’re all human. All the dancers (including the twerking girls) were humanized.
Maybe the problem is us. When we’re presented with black girls twerking, we perceive it as a negative association. Maybe sensationalist media is being internalized. I personally think we’re becoming so ready to find racist or offensive messages in every piece of media, even a really catchy and cute musical piece.
Just think: while we’re getting down and out about the sensationalist media of the world, we could’ve been getting down to Taylor’s sick beat.