While the reaction of parents and school patrons to "The Thriller" drill team controversy may have been meant to send out a strong message that it was morally wrong for young women to dance in public while wearing tight-fitting women's clothes, the public's reaction to the Mz. Marsh Valley contest sent out an even stronger message that it was A-OK for young men to dance in public while wearing tight-fitting women's clothes, but only as long as they wore wigs and fake boobs while they did it. I have already chronicled much of my remembrance of the pageant in my write-up for song #189: Maple Leaf Rag. But I did not mention that we all had to learn a really lame Jane Fonda-esque workout routine to the song "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" by Cyndi Lauper. I don't remember the dance moves now. I think that's in part because I didn't remember them back then either. Much of the unintended comedic moves I performed in that routine arose organically out of my inability to memorize the elaborate sequence of moves that some girls on the drill team had made up for us. Although, in my own defense, I don't think my botched dance moves could have been any worse than the dancing in the music video for the song.
Watching the video now brings back fond memories of coming home from school to find my depressed aproned mother cracking two dozen eggs in a bowl for no apparent reason, because the only other thing she had out on the counter to cook with was a box of corn flakes. Of course, they were no ordinary corn flakes. These cornflakes had the ability to pour themselves! (Check out the video at the 00:41 mark to see what I mean.)
From what I can tell from the video, girls in the early 80s found it fun to (a) twist the arms of obese, shirtless men with Jerry curls; (b) talk on the phone; (c) engage in small-group synchronized movements while sitting on bleachers; (d) become trapped in the Phantom Zone; (e) watch hunchbacks carry unconscious women into cathedrals; (f) put on sunglasses; and (g) dance in an every increasingly longer conga line down the middle of a street lined with obviously unemployed men into a New York subway that leads to the court-house steps and then all the way back to their pink-walled bedrooms where they can have a confetti party. Yep. That's exactly what girls did for fun in the early 80s. For boys to have fun, they had to engage in publicly sanctioned cross-dressing activities.
Watching the video now brings back fond memories of coming home from school to find my depressed aproned mother cracking two dozen eggs in a bowl for no apparent reason, because the only other thing she had out on the counter to cook with was a box of corn flakes. Of course, they were no ordinary corn flakes. These cornflakes had the ability to pour themselves! (Check out the video at the 00:41 mark to see what I mean.)
From what I can tell from the video, girls in the early 80s found it fun to (a) twist the arms of obese, shirtless men with Jerry curls; (b) talk on the phone; (c) engage in small-group synchronized movements while sitting on bleachers; (d) become trapped in the Phantom Zone; (e) watch hunchbacks carry unconscious women into cathedrals; (f) put on sunglasses; and (g) dance in an every increasingly longer conga line down the middle of a street lined with obviously unemployed men into a New York subway that leads to the court-house steps and then all the way back to their pink-walled bedrooms where they can have a confetti party. Yep. That's exactly what girls did for fun in the early 80s. For boys to have fun, they had to engage in publicly sanctioned cross-dressing activities.
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