What Lara Spencer's excuses to the male ballet dancers hold and are still wrong

I hate to be the gay gesticulating about the controversy surrounding Lara Spencer's jokes about men dancing ballet on Friday Hello Americabut apparently, we're still fiddling around clichés, even in 2019. So, here I am.

It was the same for male ballet dancers Robbie Fairchild, Travis Wall and Fabrice Calmels. In addition to Wall, who speaks openly about his sexuality and LGBTQ + activism, I do not know the sexual orientations of the dancers. But I know they have a common experience of bullying and shame because of their passion for something that, for a wider and dominant heteronormative culture, is not considered traditionally male.

I know that's exactly what they said to Spencer Monday morning GMA.

The dancers were part of a combination of excuses and a teachable moment that was orchestrated as a result of Friday's controversy. During a segment of the courses in which Prince George will be enrolled when he will start school, Spencer laughed, explaining that he was going to take ballet, and add jokes at the expense of the six-year-old girl and her parents until she co-hosts and the GMA the studio audience joined her in laughter.

After an innocuous and unstable excuses on Instagram this weekend, she returned to GMA On Monday morning, she was sincerely contrite as she introduced her conversation with the trio of dancers. It's a segment that has resulted in a lot of things – after it was released on Monday morning, Wall and Fairchild were in Times Square and teaching dance to girls and boys – but still went wrong. The same thing as these "teachable moments" tend to always be wrong.

"I messed up .I did it," said Spencer Monday morning. "The comment I made about the dance was insensitive, it was stupid and I am deeply sorry, I have spoken to several members of the dance community in recent days.I listened.I learned the courage necessary for a young boy to embark on the dance. "

Fairchild, former principal dancer of the New York City Ballet, alongside Taylor Swift and Judi Dench in the film cats film, told that he was in college when his classmates discovered he was taking a dance class in the street, showed up at the studio window and laughed. "I can not tell you how bad it is," he says.

Calmels, a French dancer who is the principal dancer of the Chicago Joffrey Ballet, explained how he taught dance to young children. He saw "boys simply give up because of the stigma of the form". right to live experiences without being bullied. "

And Wall, who became famous as a competitor of the TV series So you think you can dance and won two Emmy Awards for her choreography, talked about the power of visibility that can have a mainstream series. "How many boys started dancing because of this show makes me so proud to represent this show."

Spencer finished by thanking them for participating in the conversation: "For me, the lesson is that words hurt. This was not my intention. But it was insensitive, and thank you all for giving me the opportunity to personally apologize to you.

That's all you could hope for after an incident that reminded us so cruelly that cheerful shame and the damning judgment of gender norms are still an integral part of our culture. It was a revelation to see that such a bad judgment could be married with occasional sunshine during a popular morning show, perhaps the baseline at any time for our own cultural mores, For the best or for the worst.

Spencer offered a clear, educated and humble apology, as well as an understanding that the incident was to spark a conversation with those who felt wronged. But the truth is that the conversation only concerned one segment of those who felt wronged.

While this is an admirable exploration of what a dancer must overcome to keep childhood lessons in a career in the discipline, as well as the need to break stigma against boys who dance, the segment does not have explored what necessitated the conversation in the film. first place.

Even for a person who should be considered an ally – I do not think anyone who thinks Lara Spencer is really homophobic, in the sense we usually see him – her words reminded her that there was a change to wait. it reveals how deeply these offensive clichés about gender and sexuality are rooted.

And if a big morning show like GMA, following a viral controversy like this, did he really solve the problem? And what if it finally brings, alongside the success stories of ballet dancers, college students and LGBT students and experts on the tangible effects of this latent societal intimidation?

"Cancel Culture" – the impulse to fire anyone who commits a public mistake or who says something offensive, mistaken or otherwise – has become too rabid, voracious and ruthless to be effective. What do we gain when, instead of conversation or contrition, all speech and all education stops? It is a missed opportunity not only for the person in question to grow up, but also for the whole culture, to take it into account, to debate it and to evolve it.

After Spencer mocks Prince George and male dancers, Broadway stars, celebrities and dance icons posted on social media to reprimand his comments on a slippery scale of vitriol dancer – all the attributes that go to the Against this basic misconception that dance is exclusively flying, fairy and weak.

It is admirable that Spencer seemed to equate all these comments – at least in his televised and public-oriented life – and consider the value of translating his own education to the audience of his show.

With so many of these controversies, the greatest hope or desire aroused is a conversation about it, which almost never happens. The most infuriating aspect of the Oscar scandal Kevin Hart, at least for me, was insinuating that anyone who was furious or disappointed by his homophobic jokes of the past wanted him to be fired, without asking of questions, without possibility of remorse. It is myopic – and in my view, a recent and unhealthy development of our culture – not to see an unworthy opportunity.

The critics wanted to know what Hart had learned about why his past jokes could still cause such an injury, even if they had been in the past. They wanted to understand how he thought his platform could be used for the better. They wanted to understand a state of mind that could distract someone from views such as those he had articulated in the past and get them to take a more evolved perspective today. They wanted a conversation.

But Hart's defensive rejection of criticism has silenced this potential discourse. His petulant martyrdom was perhaps more telling than what he had said in the first place. Spencer's Monday party may reflect his true education, or perhaps simply damage control. But that left room for conversation. It's just the time that this conversation is deepened.

It's ridiculous that the idea that ballet is for wet chickens still exists. Men who train for ballet are arguably among the strongest, strongest and most disciplined athletes in the world. What they are able to accomplish with their bodies is also amazing, often more than anything that one could see while watching sports.

Gene Kelly, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Hell, even Channing Tatum or Hugh Jackman: How many prominent men are we going to see become major stars through their talent for dancing, while perpetuating the same? idea that real men do not dance? (Oh, what if you're a talented dancer with no biceps as big as your head and a square jaw to fill a movie screen?

But, ridiculous or not, this notion still exists. What is perhaps more surprising is that we allow ourselves to forget that.

When there is progress of any kind in terms of gender representation, LGBTQ + acceptance and celebration of identity, we forget how superficial it can be. We forget how deep our feelings, conversations and thoughts about ourselves must be in order for change, real change, to happen.

See how easy it was for each person on the screen, from Spencer to his co-hosts to the audience behind her, to laughing at a little boy taking ballet classes, as if it were a good thing. was a reflex to do it. Maybe because it still is.

How many of us are "awake" but, basically, are uncomfortable with anything that does not conform to the gender roles we have been conditioned to accept? How many of us think we understand, until we have the opportunity to prove it? How many people like their gay friends, their nonconformist hairdressers, who like to go to Broadway shows, and who like to parade in the Pride parades who could still indulge in the idea that their own sons take a ballet, or the hypothetical one further, be gay?

I'm not sure these are topics that could be deepened in five minutes. Hello America segment. I'm glad the little spotlight on the shame and stigma faced by male dancers, at least, has been. But what if, this time, we can get a little more indignation from reflex reflex?