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In This Issue

• Letter From the Editor
• They Watch
• Alcohol.edu Valedictorian Gets Schwasty
• Student Spots Celeb and Doesn’t Flip a Shit; Friends Doubt Her Sanity
• Columbia College First-Year Picks Worst Chair in Classroom
• Columbiascopes
• Class Clown’s Unexpectedly Well-Conceived Joke Falls Flat in LitHum Class
• Tweets of the Week
• Black Friday: A Nocturnal Dad In The AM
• The First Danksgiving Miracle
• Santa Claus is actually Jewish
• What Do You Think?
• “A Rugrats Chanukah” Cures Anti-Semitism
• The Yellow Term Paper
• #ivyleagueproblems
• If You Tweet in the Forest, Does it Make a Sound?
• New Elder Scrolls Game Released “For Nefarious Pro-Capitalist Agenda,” Crackpot Says
• Dance for me, Millie
• How to Increase the Utility of Your Bathroom When You're Shitfaced
• Adventures on DateMySchool.com
• Decoded
• Ask Mark
• Heart2Heart “Facebook Official”
• Reviews of Movies We Haven't Seen Yet: Jack and Jill
• “American Horror Story” is Actually Crazy
• “Dance Moms”: Small Girls, Big Hair

Every few months, I find myself watching one of those YouTube videos featuring a six-year-old girl imitating a celebrity. The accuracy of her inevitably mature voice combined with her ability to shake her booty with the grace of an experienced cougar always manages to creep me out. I often find myself wondering,“Who is that girl’s mother?” Why would any parent, rather than playing dolls or coloring with her daughter, think, well I’ll just make myself a verse-spittin’, hair-flippin’ mini Nicki Minaj? It’s not a judgment call (for the most part), but a plea for understanding. I know I’m not alone in these questions. Fortunately, “Dance Moms,” a new Lifetime show premiering this fall set out specifically to find the answer to questions like this. 

The show centers around the Abby Lee Miller Dance Company, a highly competitive studio for young girls in Pittsburg, PA. The majority of the show takes place within the studio, which is probably for the best—the occasional shot of Pittsburgh: a smoke-spewing tower or an industrial complex, has all the subtlety of a belching whale. With that said, the scene inside the Abby Lee Miller Dance Company is not much prettier. In the first episode of the season we see a large woman in sweatpants and bad eye makeup who introduces herself as the creative director of the studio. The next shot cuts to the tiny dancers, a quarter of the size of their instructor and dressed in little booty shorts. Given recent events at a certain state school that may or may not be called Penn State, this sets up a rather sinister undertone for the rest of the season.

The plot revolves around the same type of weekly standings as American Idol and similar talent shows. But because all the girls are performing the exact same choreography, their standings are based upon criteria like attendance and paying attention, creating little suspense. Every episode tracks the team’s performance at a different competition. The first thirty minutes involve rehearsal footage overlaid with bits of backtalk from Abby and grumbling from the mothers. Then in the last fifteen the girls go and perform a piece at competition. Next week, the cycle begins again. Occasionally, something exciting will happen, like a minister mother coming in to condemn Abby with biblical backup or Abby dressing the girls in fishnets and having them do hip thrusts. Sadly, moments like these are all too few and far in between. 

But it’s never for a lack of trying on the part of the girls. The way they move their bodies is really astounding: almost every rehearsal begins with them lying on their necks, touching their toes to their head. It’s almost as if they are too young for their bones to have developed, so they can just slither across the floor like little, glittery snakes. And there is something morbidly fascinating about an eight-year-old girl who wears as much makeup as an elderly Liz Taylor and as little clothing as a young, pre-preggers Britney Spears.

Despite its somewhat unpromising beginning, I do believe that great potential exists in Dance Moms. Not necessarily not as a television show, but definitely as a feature film. The action would center around six of the dancers, dressed up as Bond girls in tiny trenchcoats and stilettos. They would be sent on secret missions through very small pipes and fields of lasers, forcing them to contort their way through their assignments. The goal of their operation? To kill their mothers.