ITS WHERE DREAMS GO TO DIE.

I recently discovered a show called Dance Moms, this show which appears on Lifetime is about a competitive dance studio. The studio is run by a woman named Abby Lee Miller, who is horribly abusive towards the children and has done an excellent job of pitting the moms against each other, as well as pitting the children against each other.

For me its a show that is hard to watch, because I almost feel like it triggers post traumatic stress disorder from my days of being a gymnast. I was a competitive gymnast for most of my life and from the time I was five I had dreamed of going to the Olympics. At the height of my gymnastics career I trained under a slew of Eastern European women who had been everything from Olympians themselves, to being on the National teams in their home countries. To say they had to do gymnastics to survive would be an understatement, and gymnastics not only was the only chance they had of getting out of poverty, but it also was the only thing they knew. It was their whole life, and more importantly it was their only life. While the teacher in this situation is from this country, her dance company and her dance teams/competitions are the only thing she has, and maybe thats why she feels she needs to control everything and make sure its perfect, because her whole entire self-worth depends on it.

As I watch this horribly abusive dance teacher who is preying on the dreams of these little girls, I am reminded of similar tactics that were used against us to manipulate us and keep us in a position of submission. We were constantly degraded and told we were "stupid" or "fat" which was by far their favorite thing. We were always on diets, despite the fact that most of us barely weighed 100lbs, and our competitions looked like they were actually eating disorder clinics. I'm sickened, angry and upset by the amount of damage that is being done to these little girls, and the long term psychological effects that will develop as a result. The girls spend much of the episodes crying, are clearly unhappy, and look very broken. When a casting director came in to audition the girls, their teacher told them that no matter what he asks them they should just say "yes" to it. Well thats great, because its not like the entertainment industry isn't full of perverted old men who would love nothing more than little girls who have been taught to just do whatever they've been told.

Sports should be used to uplift girls, and to instill confidence, independence and power into them. They shouldn't be used as a tool to destroy them, but when you prey on the dreams of little girls, combined with the long lost dreams of their mothers, you are asking for a recipe for disaster. One in which emotional well being will always be overlooked in an effort to attempt to achieve that first place prize. Winning and being the best takes over everything, especially since no one is being the adult in the situation and putting their foot down and saying no. As one commentator wrote in response to this show "its like none of these moms are listening to that inner mom voice that is telling them this isn't okay."

Its similar to what child actors go through, in that with these young child athletes who are on the fast track to Olympic glory, are seen and treated as being completely disposable. Something I learned the hard way when at the ripe old age of 18 I was practically thrown out of the sport, since I was so incredibly old and I should've already made it to the Olympics. The gymnastics world loves their pre-pubescent girls who still look like they're 8 years old, and once you start to leave that pretty little box they start to look for the next crop of girls to replace you. There will always be girls, and there will always be parents willingly to play out their own dreams through their children. When did money and a stupid fucking gold medal become more important than the life of a child? Than a child's own happiness and their right to live in a world free from abuse?

Children don't belong on movie sets, they don't belong in gyms training for 8 hours a day surrounded by irresponsible abusive adult who are using these kids for their own personal gains. Children belong in school with their friends. Sports, or the arts should complement and enhance that, it should never be the focus of the child's life. I hope this show serves as a wake-up call, and forces a lot of people to really look at all these things clearly and see that this is not an acceptable way to be doing things. Winning a gold medal or having lots of money will not make you happy. It won't make people love you, and it won't fill whatever void is missing.

I went through hell to learn this, and sometimes I'm glad that at least at the young age of 18 I learned this valuable life lesson. Chasing after something like that wasn't worth the damage it did to my health, all the abuse I endured and in the end it didn't make me happy. I do believe that if I had trained from an earlier age with one of my Olympic coaches I would've made it to the Olympics, but I also wonder if there would've been anything left of me. I know it would've required me to sacrifice more of my health, more of what little normalcy I had, meaning never seeing friends and training all day long, and enduring even more abuse and physical pain because of all the injuries. I probably would've lied and told myself it was worth it, because quite frankly its been hard enough for me to see the truth about what I did go through and to see how many adults failed me. That ultimately in the end it wasn't worth it. Even more importantly I could've been a successful gymnast and it all could've been done through positive uplifting methods that would've served me in the much greater sense of long term life goals, than this immediate sense of "I must win or I'm worthless."

All of this needs to change, and its up to us as adults to change our focus. The only goal people should be working towards is a goal of happiness, anything that gets in the way of that should be removed from our collective consciousness immediately.