Dagga! Dagga! Dagga!

I deactivated my facebook (yay!)

and blocked my twitter for an entirety of 24 hours (double yay!)

Needless to say, my communication abilities are a bit stunted which is good because now I can channel all this pent up energy into a beautifully constructed blog (which will have graphics soon), instead of mindlessly posting statuses for a bunch of people to read who I don't actually speak to in real life. (LAME!)

Anyway, so while i was "doing homework" (cough cough), I stumbled upon this documentary called "Man Ooman" about modern dancehall subculture, and that style of dancing.

I personally would like to see the whole thing because I don't get it. Why would a girl/woman volunteer herself to be objectified, and have her hair and clothes get messed up in the process. Giiirrrrll, you know you spent hours on that! There's nothing wrong with dances being sexual. I just see a problem with it when that sexuality is paired with aggression. 

There's definitely a role reversal from traditional dancing. In traditional grinding "the woman is the portrait and the male is the frame." Her goal being to "break" him. Some (probably Caribbean) guys follow and some just stand there while the woman does her thing, but daggering is about power. The men try to show off like in Cuban-style salsa or Casino but they take it a step further and try to show the woman their power in a very aggressively sexual, almost violent manner. Sometimes the girls even try to run away! Yikes!

Examples:

Grinding or Dubbing:

Perreo:

Daggering:

Here's a trailer for the documentary:

According to Beenie Man, dancehall started in the ghetto. I particularly felt enlightened by Stacey Ann Chin's quote, 

 "When you have no control over your kids and your life, you seek control in weird places like "I'm gonna control how high this girl can place her leg or how hard I can thrust her against the wall."

Sociologists say that in poor areas, young girls tend to be hyper-sexual and men tend to be violent so why wouldn't that be expressed through dance (e.g. grinding/dubbing/perreo/daggering and the slew of youtube taped fights that have become popular in recent times.)

If someone finds the whole documentary, let me know!

I'd like to get another female's perspective on this. What do you think about our way of expressing ourselves through dance? Do women enjoy this? Do they do it to feel bad or because it's all they know? to fit in? low self-esteem? daddy issues? sexual empowerment? to feel attractive to the opposite sex? influence by the media?