The DA:NCE – Freedom From Exploitation And Trafficking – with Mary Bawden – [Ep. 227]

Linda J Hansen: Welcome. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Prosperity 101® Breakroom Economics Podcast. My name is Linda J. Hansen, your host and the author of Prosperity 101® Job Security Through Business Prosperity: The Essential Guide to Understanding How Policy Affects Your Paycheck, and the creator of the Breakroom Economics online course.

The book, the course, and the entire podcast library can be found on Prosperity101.com. I seek to connect boardroom to break room and policy to paycheck by empowering and encouraging employers to educate employees about the public policy issues that affect their jobs. 

My goal is to help people understand the foundations of prosperity, the policies of prosperity, and how to protect their prosperity by becoming informed, involved, and impactful. I believe this will lead to greater employee loyalty, engagement, and retention, and to an increased awareness of the blessings and responsibilities of living in a free society. Listen each week to hear from exciting guests, and be sure to visit Prosperity101.com. 

I have often discussed the issue of human trafficking, especially the abusive sexual trafficking of women and children. This is inextricably linked to current policies at our border, and with law enforcement, and it is linked to our educational system as we have allowed young children to be exposed to inappropriate sexual content in the classroom and in media. 

If you are a business owner, or simply a concerned parent or grandparent, please stay tuned as we discuss another avenue in which our culture has infiltrated the innocence of youth, often causing harm that can last a lifetime. We will also discuss positive action steps you can take as a business owner or simply as an individual to protect young people, which in turn strengthens our society as we help children grow into emotionally healthy adults. 

You may have noticed an unusual title to this episode, DA:NCE - Freedom From Exploitation and Trafficking. Dance recitals and competitions are wonderful. They provide great opportunities for young people and many young people perform in them all over our nation. As a business owner, you may even sponsor dance recitals. 

Are we serving the young people well with the choreography, music costumes, and even with sponsorships that promote appropriate goods and services? My guest, Mary Bawden, claims that in children's dance classes around the nation, young children are learning to dance with choreography that hypersexualizes them and their bodies. These children have become covert victims of sexual exploitation in what used to be a safe place, the dance studio.

Children's dance is often being distorted. And the art form of dance is being hijacked. These studios and teachers often unknowingly model their movement choices on what they see in the media culture. This cultural shift is the difference between healthy, age-appropriate dance versus unhealthy, age-inappropriate dance.

Seductive, sexualized dance moves have become the norm in many dance classes, even for very young children. As a dance educator and book author with a BAMA and California Secondary Teaching Credential, Mary Bawden loves dance and has researched its benefits. In 2003, she founded Soul To Sole, Soul-To-Sole choreography to provide concrete tools for people of faith to experience hope and healing through the language of movement.

She went on to found Dance Awareness: No Child Exploited. To protect children from hypersexualization in adult costumes, choreography, and music, while advocating to protect the art of dance for all. Mary's passion is to help adults understand the difference between harmful and healthy children's dance, with informed choice, education, and practical actions to change the culture.

Welcome, Mary. And thank you for your efforts to provide a positive dance experience for all young people. Please tell us more about Dance Awareness No Child Exploited. 

Mary Bawden: Well, it's a joy to be here, and I'm always happy to tell people about Dance Awareness: No Child Exploited. The acronym is DA:NCE, so we're easy to remember. DA:NCE actually is the shortened form of Dance Awareness: No Child Exploited. You can find us on danceawareness.com. And we really do love healthy dance, and we really do not love harmful dance. 

So one of the purposes for our website is to define those terms and to help people understand that we are in a cultural tsunami. There's been a change from healthy educational children's dance to harmful hypersexualized children's dance, and you know a lot of people have recognized this trend this pattern. But they have no idea what to do about it. And so we provide the resources to do something about it. 

And so that's a great space to be in because people need to know they need to engage. They need to communicate. They need to talk to each other and get that education going so that we change the culture.  

Linda J Hansen: It's exciting what you're doing and, you know, as we think about changing the culture in so many ways my podcast episodes cover a wide variety of issues, but they're also interconnected. And that's one of the things I really try to help people understand is connecting those dots.

You know, these things aren't happening, in a bubble. You know, that the fact that costumes, choreography, music has changed so much in the dance recitals we see now and the dance programs that we see, you know, this is not by accident. This has been the cultural shift that we've seen and we see it affecting everything, our educational system, our media, you know, our culture, our workplaces.

And I would really like you to also connect the problem with hypersexualization of children with the sexual exploitation of children. I know when we have talked before, we've talked a little bit about how often, you know, child, like pedophiles and things, they really look at dance programs, they follow dance programs.

And when parents post all the pictures of the kids and things, you know, they really look at that and sometimes we don't even realize that we're putting our children in danger because of the hyper-sexualization of them. And can you address that a little bit and how some of that has led into, you know, the trafficking opportunities and the, you know, just putting children at risk with people who want to harm them?

Mary Bawden: Well, you know, I think a lot of people want to look horizontally and solve issues and problems based on a context that they're in. But I find the hypersexualization of children, that larger picture has a much bigger umbrella above it. And that umbrella came with the advent of the internet, the media and the porn industry. And the porn industry has used dance that is very popular with young people and adults alike to really make a lot of money off unhealthy kinds of outcomes. 

So, I could say, maybe I could take you back to 1983 when the New York Times released an article called The Loss of Innocence. They were talking about childhood and in that article, they said we had gone from an age of protection, shielding kids from adult issues, to an age of preparation, exposing children to adult issues.

And the research though shows then and now, as we expose kids to things they shouldn't be exposed to, it just doesn't work. And I can share in a little bit some of those research outcomes, but right now, I'd like to just share with you. Yeah, how would you feel if I gave a six-year-old a $5, the keys to my car, and I said, drive to the store, get me a quart of milk and return?

And all of you, if you could look at me, you would think I was crazy. It's not that that child will never be able to do that task. But the exposure to those particular actions, they just can't do. It's not age-appropriate. And that's what we're looking at.

We're not saying sex is bad. We're not even saying you shouldn't have a choice when you're an adult. But what we are saying is it's age-inappropriate to expose any child to adult sexuality, much of which in this culture is what researcher Gail Dines calls a pornified culture. Another researcher named Philip Adams calls it corporate pedophilia.

Because the pornography industry is making money off children, specifically in dance, when children are put in hypersexualized material. They upload those dances with those hypersexualized costumes, choreography, and music to specific social media sites. Well, the predators all know how to get those videos. They take them, upload them to porn sites and sometimes, contact the children. 

And so it's all a huge toxic mix because so much of our culture is hypersexualized. Of course, it's not dance, but dance is a major portal and whether a child is taking dance or watching dance. And I want to underscore watching dance. It affects all children and grooms them for unhealthy outcomes. 

So, we're not just talking about dance. We're talking about all children, whether they take dance or not, are being affected and groomed with exposure to adult sexuality. 

Linda J Hansen: That's such a good point because not all children are in dance.

Mary Bawden: No, but they're all being groomed.

Linda J Hansen: Yes, they are all being groomed. And, you know, I would really like to encourage parents and dance instructors to think also about the lyrics of the music that they play. There are so many songs now. I mean, there's always been songs that are inappropriate for children, but I think especially now, and because so many things are in the larger media and social media just blows everything up to be larger than life, right?

But some of these songs that are so popular in our culture right now, if parents and dance instructors, grandparents would sit and listen to the lyrics of these songs and think, is this what we would allow to be talked about at the dinner table? Is this what we want, you know, our children to be talking about with each other?

And, you know, because it's music, we become so numb to what the words are and we just keep putting that in. And so these are messages we're giving young people that hypersexualize in a sense. And, or even some things that might be you know, inappropriate in other ways that, you know, when adults can make decisions about things, that's different.

But when kids are being really, you know, just having it played over and over and over. When I think about how many practices, how many rehearsals, how many times they're running through it at home and things for these performances, it's just going into their mind. It's like anything. I mean, you know, I can think of commercials from when I was four years old, right?

And so, because they were jingles, they were music, there's something about music and words and movement that cements something in our mind. And we need to be really mindful about what we are feeding our children's hearts and minds. And  thi really impacts the larger society. You talked about, you know, the porn industry and things.

And so, for business owners who are listening right now, don't tune this out. Don't think that this doesn't affect you. This affects your business. 

Mary Bawden: It does.

Linda J Hansen: Yes, and I've done episodes on helping to identify trafficking in your business. You know, whether you own a restaurant or you own a manufacturing facility, or whatever it is. What are the signs of the fact that someone might be trafficked or abused? 

And as a business owner, you can look and see what are the things that are being supported in your community. Is it healthy dance? Is it unhealthy dance? What would you like to sponsor? You know, a lot of businesses sponsored dance recitals or dance programs.

And this is great. It's great to sponsor things in the community and show your community support, but ask yourself, are these things that I would want, you know, my child doing? Or are these, you know, if you really take a look at it, is it healthy or is it harmful? 

And so, for business owners, what would you tell them about why this is so important for them to actually connect the dots about?

Mary Bawden: Well, I first want to say before I answer that question, we're normalizing what is not normal, number one. Not only are we grooming children, but we're grooming adults. 

So adults have been groomed by the internet media porn culture. The research calls us mirror neurons. We copy what we see. And everybody's been so busy, we've allowed a stream of inappropriate material into our homes, into the movies, into our magazines, into our computers, into our dance studios, and into our phones.

So, adults unknowingly, because I think they're uneducated about the effects of this, have allowed it, and they're being groomed just like their children are through mirror neurons, copying. We copy what we take in and put it in our homes or allow. Again, no fingers to point, just we want to educate you so you know what's happening.

And then, as far as business owners, why would this be important to a business owner? Well, business owners, do you have employees or do you have clients, who have children? It's a pretty bottom-line question, but I'll bet the answer is yes. And so, as a business owner, you want to protect kids in your community or the area that you serve.

And maybe you're an online business. I don't know, but a goal and a way to really highlight your interest in the culture is to protect kids. Every adult usually gravitates toward a business that will protect children. So you can sponsor healthy dance. You can sponsor unhealthy dance or harmful dance.

And I think there are just a lot of ways that we want to promote healthy dance and healthy activities when we become educated and aware, So, in part of that is doing that respectfully. We never shame or blame in Dance Awareness: No Child Exploited because there is such a large group of the adults and children who are unaware of the issues and the trauma of this trend.

We also like to communicate the connection between the public health issue of porn for children in a nonpartisan way. So, a business owner, I think, can really stand out from other businesses by taking a stand on saying, we need to protect kids, and so I'm going to sponsor fill in the blank organization in your community that is really doing things that will uplift and normalize healthy habits for children.

Linda J Hansen: It's so important and for business owners, too, just think about the emotional toll that happens when children are exploited or teenagers. You know, when children are abused, exploited, it affects not just that one person, but an entire family, an entire community, and it has long-lasting effects. These things go into adulthood.

And they make for, you know, people who may be dealing with trauma issues. They may find it hard to, you know, keep their mind on their work. I mean, all kinds of things, but we're really caring. It's not so much about the business. Yes, that's important, and that's something to think about. 

So business owners, if you're thinking, how does this affect my bottom line? Well, it does. The long-term effects, it does, but more importantly, how does it affect the individuals? And we are here to make sure that no child is exploited. And we say no child, no teenager, no child. 

Mary Bawden: That's right. 

Linda J Hansen: Really we don't want to see adults exploited. You know, this is a cultural issue that we see. And especially with what we've seen over the last several years with the increase in human trafficking and the sexual trafficking of women, children, young boys, I mean, it's just so heartbreaking and this is going to be an emotional mental health nightmare come 10, 20 years from now. 

And so, we need to start preparing now to really like turn that tide, but then also understand some of these causes so we know how to address it to help these people heal.

Mary Bawden: Well, I appreciate that you mentioned trafficking and prostitution because if you look at the research and what's happening in dance right now, it's right in that mix. I am talking about hypersexualized dance, exposure inside or outside the dance studio. So we're right in there. 

And that's because the pornography industry is using all of these different areas to groom people to normalize what is not normal. If I can, I'd like to give your listeners the definition from the APA, the American Psychological Association, that defines what constitutes a hypersexualized child. 

Number one, he or she is valued only for their sexual appeal or behavior. Two, their physical attractiveness is equated with being sexy. Three, they're made into an object. Or four, sexuality is inappropriately imposed on them. 

So if you think about dance or you think about so many activities in our culture, you're going to see, if you start opening up your eyes, that all around us, our kids are being exposed to things they shouldn't be exposed to. They're just not ready. 

Remember that story of the six-year-old and driving down to the market in a car, you know, there's no way that six-year-old can do that task. 

Linda J Hansen: Right. 

Mary Bawden: And so, that's how the brain is. I mentioned mirror neurons and children copy what they see, which is primary to their development. But I can also tell you when children are exposed to inappropriate sexuality in an adult way, their brain doesn't develop as it should. 

The front part of their brain is called the frontal cortex. As they develop and they have healthy experiences, they learn self-control. And we, as parents, I have three adult children, we all know how self-control is critical to your development and growing up.

Well, that stops when children are exposed to hypersexualized material. And what happens is the back part of the brain, the basal ganglia, which is responsible for impulsive behavior, that is a child wants a cookie and you can say, no, you got to wait till dinner, and they go ballistic because they're acting impulsively.

So, hypersexualized adult material is inappropriate for a particular child at a particular age level really affects brain development in significant ways because children just can't process all of the adult material they're exposed to in a way that helps them grow. So they just learn to be more and more impulsive and less and less self-controlled.

Linda J Hansen: Well, it's a good point. And, you know, the other thing I was thinking, you know, we don't want to imply that these dances or things will like every child will be, you know, in the porn industry or abused or something, but it changes how they view their sexuality and their worth. 

And so even if they grow up into having, you know, a healthy dating relationship, a healthy marriage relationship, just having that kind of distorted view of sexuality when they are a child absolutely affects them in ways that we don't even know yet, you know, and--

Mary Bawden: Yeah, we really don't know the effects, but I can stop you just a little bit and tell you there are effects on just an individual child. Maybe they're not trafficked. Great. Maybe they're not a prostitute. Great. But the stimulation and the normalization of that exposure to adult sexuality, which is really softcore porn and higher in some cases does have an effect that produces trauma in a child. 

Let me tell you a story. In March, I went to Ohio. I was at a conference, and I had a young lady come into our exhibit booth, about 22, just beautiful, beautiful girl, and she looked at our split screen, in our booth. We have half of its healthy dance, half of its harmful dance, which is sexualized, of course, and she started looking at it. 

And I had been talking with somebody else, and I finished, and went over to her, and she stood up and looked at me, and she said, I did harmful dance my whole childhood, and she fell into my arms, actually, and started crying. And she said I am trying to figure out and get myself out of horrible after effects from that. 

Now, she didn't have words to explain what had happened to her. But folks, I can tell you if a child isn't trafficked or they're not a prostitute, yay, but that alone doesn't mean hypersexualized exposure is not going to affect development dramatically. And she was one of those cases, and I hear from these examples all the time. 

And so, I was talking with her and she started listing all the things she's trying to recover from. And the research is very clear about harmful outcomes in all kinds of way and I looked at her and I said, I am so sorry that you had to experience this on behalf of all adults.

And she said, oh, it's okay. And I looked at her and I said, no, it's not. It's not okay. And I do think I was used to help heal her that day to a little bit. But she said, nobody talks about this in the culture. No one is coming forward and really addressing it. And she said it's awful. 

And I'll tell you another thing that's awful. She's 22. Well, they like younger and younger girls in terms of hypersexualized adult material. And I'm embarrassed to say how young it's going. It's going three and two. I know that might shock some of your viewers, but statistically, it's getting younger and younger, and she's a throwaway girl. Ladies and gentlemen, she's 22. They don't really have any use for her anymore. It's too old. 

So, we make children into mini-adult. We use and abuse them, and it's a matter of educating our culture so that people have informed choice. Now, I can also say the research shows that healthy dance is on the extreme end of the best thing you can do for a child because it integrates a child in mind, body, and spirit. And we all know where that idea came from.

In Him, we live and move and have our being. So we have God's idea, his wiring coming together in a beautiful way for a child to express themselves by moving their body. And we also live in a culture where nobody so we're really cheating our kids and not allowing them to explore expresses themselves by using their body because they’re using a cellphone and doing this all day. So we’re really cheating on our kids and not allowing them to explore creatively the wonder of and the magnificence of how they've been created.

So again, I'll go back to informed choice. I wouldn't discourage anybody from enrolling their child in a dance class, but you have to be educated. You have to make sure you're talking to the dance studio owner and when your children are exposed to this, please take the time to be educated yourself so you can help them understand.

This is not something they need to be part of. So, we all need to do a lot of work, but you know, informed choice happens all the time. We decide when we're going to go to sleep. We decide when we're going to go to eat. We decide what we're going to watch on TV. And dance is just no different.

So there's healthy dance and there's harmful dance. And I might want to add one more thing, a very simplified definition of healthy and harmful dance for people that don't have a dance background. They don't know what a plie is or a battement tendu or a grand jeté. 

Healthy dance, which is educational dance. Children look like children in age-appropriate costumes, choreography, and music, usually accompanied by a great sense of joy. In harmful, hypersexualized dance, children look like adults in adult costumes, choreography, and music, usually accompanied by adult hairstyles and makeup. 

Now we have a further definition, a deeper one on our website, but that's simplified, and when I share that, adults seem to find that to be helpful. 

Linda J Hansen: That is helpful. And I'm so glad that you told people that dance is wonderful. 

Mary Bawden: It is wonderful.

Linda J Hansen: Dance is wonderful. Dance, sports, all of it is wonderful. There's healthy and harmful. And so we don't want to discourage anybody from dancing. Dancing is beautiful.

And for anybody who might be listening and think, oh, those Christians, they just don't think we should be dancing. No, no, no. There is a lot of dancing in the Bible. You know, there's a lot of dancing, singing, dancing in the Bible. 

Mary Bawden: Joy.

Linda J Hansen: There is joy. Dance, it is an expression of joy. It is an expression of beauty and we want people to be able to express themselves through dance and we know that there's children who flourish, flourish in dance and grow to be, you know, amazingly gifted, talented. Maybe it's their career and we want that for them. We want them to have that opportunity to do so in a really healthy environment. 

Before we close, I do want to let people know you do have a really great tool that can help people as they try to decide, A, if they're a business owner, like what kind of studio they want to support or sponsor, but B, like, if you are a parent or a grandparent, and if you're looking for a dance studio to enroll your children in, you have a direct link. It's called the Healthy Dance Directory. And so how can people get access to this directory? 

Mary Bawden: Well, I'm so excited to share this with you go on danceawareness.com and you will see at the top right, Healthy Dance Directory. How about that for a difficult access? 

And what you can do, what we're asking people to do, including your listeners here, is there is a map, and this has only been up for the last two weeks. We already have about 40 nominations, but we're asking anybody who knows of a healthy dance studio to nominate that studio. And then once it's nominated by you, our staff send the dance studio an email in which they have to accept our definition of healthy and harmful dance. And if they do, we put them on the map.

So what does this do? Instead of isolating healthy dance teachers and organizations and parents and grandparents, all of a sudden we have a growing group of people who understand that healthy dance is what we want to do for our children. That's what values them. That's what will help them grow. 

So I would like to invite anybody hearing this podcast to please go to danceawareness.com. Click on the Healthy Dance Directory and nominate a dance studio or organization that you think teaches healthy dance, as well you might just be a dance educator yourself. And so, you know, we're just bringing these two groups together in such a way that we're making a difference in the culture. 

We're also going to have live, something called the dance coalition. We want to bring together dance educators, parents, interested adults who care about kids and want to make sure they're being exposed appropriately to the dance arts. And so, we want your name. You can sign up. It'll be live in two weeks.

And then we want your ideas because we have something special called Roadmap Technology, where you can just put your ideas in as to things you think would be effective to make change in our culture on this. 

So with the Dance Coalition and with the Healthy Dance Directory, we think we're taking action in such a way as to change the culture. And folks, remember, we are the culture. There's no calvary that's going to come in and save us. We are the calvary. 

Linda J Hansen: Exactly. Well, I so appreciate your efforts to help protect children and to help people heal. You mentioned the 22-year-old woman who came and, you know, hopefully, she will be someone who really helps young people in her life as well.

So, we just know that we have an opportunity to reach in to that next generation and everything we do. And this is a podcast about policy. So, we want to make sure when we think about policies in our government and in our schools, that we think down that line, too, like how do we protect that next generation from this hypersexualization in dance, but in literature, in everything they do, in music, you know, we want to protect them. 

So Mary, thank you so much. And so listeners again, you can reach Mary by going to danceawareness.com. You can get the Healthy Dance Directory. Watch for the upcoming coalition, and please reach out to Mary if you have any questions. So, thank you, Mary. 

Mary Bawden: Thanks so much for having me.

Linda J Hansen: Thank you again for listening to the Prosperity 101® podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, share, and leave a great review. Don't forget to visit Prosperity101.com to access the entire podcast library, to order my newest book, Job Security Through Business Prosperity: The Essential Guide to Understanding How Policy Affects Your Paycheck, or to enroll you or your employees in the Breakroom Economics online course.

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Please contact us today at Prosperity101.com to let us know how we can serve you. Thank you.