The video of the perreo of some minors in a nightclub in Barcelona has raised a great uproar. It showed young women moving their hips and bending at the waist, while some boys and some girls danced behind them, standing a few or no centimeters from their buttocks. A typical choreography of some Latin rhythms, whose names escape me.
Some network users, commentators and opinion makers considered it a major scandal, in which the girls were victims of a macho culture that promotes a sexuality in which they are submissive and men dominate them.
Insurance? Is the fact that a girl moves her buttocks near the hips of a boy or girl necessarily submission and machismo? Or can it also be fun, empowering, or just the desire to party? Faced with the controversy, several young women in the video came out to say that for them this is a dance, which begins and ends when they want and has nothing to do with sex.
But even if it had to do with sex, should it be criticized? What is the problem? If a girl doesn’t mind showing that she can enjoy sex, is she a victim or an empowered one?
If it were up to their parents’ will, most women in the world would die virgins. There is something, of which I do not know the origin, that makes many parents, even the most progressive, get their hair on end just thinking that their daughters can have sex. But we cannot judge what happens in discos with this look. “What are they doing to my girl?” Dad thinks. Perhaps it is not that they are doing anything to her, but that the girl is having a good time. If you want to tell him that these things are not done and that sex is bad, that is another matter.
It is not the first time that the adult generations find the dances of the youngest scandalous. You just have to look for the reactions that Elvis’s hip dance or the lambada raised in its day. But notice that no one has cried out to heaven for the boys, who were almost the other half of those who participated in the perreo. Maybe that is machismo. Perhaps, if we let ourselves be guided by the emotions of some parents, only males can want, have and enjoy sex.
