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Category: Uncategorized
DANCE MUMS – YAY OR NAY?
“Dance Moms – well we might call it Dance Mums is coming to Australia … I’m searching for the best elite dance troupe in the world, and I need you to audition.”
Nikki Webster
That was in 2019.
Nikki Webster’s call for talent on Instagram lured several young Australian hopefuls, looking to be the next Maddie or Jojo for the reality tv dance show set to film in 2020.
The show would follow studio owner, Nikki as she formed a dance troupe from the best of the auditionees and prepared them to compete at an elite national level.
Combined with the dancing, the behind-the-scenes mum-drama was an expected drawcard – if it was to follow the American show’s format.
While it met enthusiasm from the dancers, and their mums, the call-out met backlash from the dance community voiced their concerns in their local Facebook dance groups.
Two years and a global pandemic later, the lack of news updates, past Christmas 2019, on the show’s progress or a possible airdate suggests the idea was an all but forgotten casualty of public backlash.
Central Victoria dance teacher, Sharon Elfert said she was aware of such a show in planning but after not receiving the support expected from the dance community, it never eventuated.
“There was such a huge outcry from the dance community on the negative effects that such a show would have on the industry that it never got off the ground,” Mrs Elfert said.
She said that subjecting children to the psychological abuse evident on the US show, Dance Moms, was not what she and other dance educators wished to be associated with.
THE ORIGINAL DANCE MOMS
Dance Mums was to be modelled off the American television show, which first aired on Lifetime in the US and has since streamed globally on various platforms.
It featured a competition dance team from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania who trained under the harsh tutelage of controversial teacher and studio owner, Abby-Lee Miller.
Week after week, viewers watched as Abby pushed her to tears, anguish, and injury, berated screamed at them, shamed them for crying – and sometimes threw their props to make a point, all for them to win at all costs.
In season two episode fifteen for example, Miller threw a chair in the presence of student, Paige Hyland because her mother, Kelly failed to put stoppers on the
bottom.
“Second is the first to lose” and “save your tears for the pillow” not only became iconic Abby-phrases, but they also gave audiences a snapshot of Miller’s tough-love attitude and teaching style.
Each week Abby ranked her team of dancers as young as six on a pyramid from best to worst based, not only on their progress and competition success but on her interactions with the dancers’ mothers.
This set up the true premise of the show – mothers who fight, scheme and
sometimes crawl their child’s way up the pyramid to be “front and centre” in future performances.
In what started out as a six-episode documentary about a competition dance team, the dancing soon took a backseat to the “mom drama”.
Dance Moms ran for seven consecutive seasons from 2011 and returned for an eighth season after a two-year hiatus.
It was a show shrouded in controversy – some of which appeared to stem from Miller’s treatment of her students, some which came from interactions between the “moms” and their interactions with each other and a lot that stemmed from the producers’ orchestration of situations to create storylines and drama.
All of it was at the expense of the young dancers at the centre of the stories that unfolded as the seasons progressed.
Abby has claimed in her YouTube videos that many of the following episodes were staged and that the show’s producers were behind some of the controversial decisions – claims that many of the dancers and the mothers supported.
Many have said the show was heavily edited and that the producers sometimes told them what to say to cause drama.
Often the producers told the mothers they could not leave the studio until they started a fight.
Abby however did admit in a video that many of the harmful comments and teaching methods were of her choosing. It was those which resulted in many of the more harmful effects on the young dancer.
Abby still justifies her harsh critique of the children by maintaining the producers didn’t show the first fifteen – or twenty times Abby gave corrections, only the times when she yelled, because the students didn’t make the corrections.
She has addressed the racism claims on Instagram, in the height of the 2020 #BlackLivesMatter movement with a blanket apology to all the dancers who felt harmed in anyway by her comments and that she would work to educate herself on African-American issues.
Lifetime and Collins Avenue, however, have since cut ties with Abby, cancelling all further production on projects linked to Abby.
Since leaving the show, many of the girls have spoken about their experiences on the show, for which they have sought therapy to heal.
Although some have used Dance Moms as a platform to propel them forward in pursuit of acting, music business, marketing, and social media influencer careers, very few of the dancers pursued a career in dance.
Abby continues to teach, holding classes in students in her Pittsburgh studio, which she still owns, and world-wide on Zoom.
*Editorial note Abby has since sold the Pittsburgh studio.
BODYSHAMING
Body-shaming was sadly a normal occurrence on-screen and behind the scenes, some which Miller directed at the students, but most was directed at Abby from the mothers.
On the receiving end of Abby’s many attacks on her appearance, was Nia-Sioux Frasier, who for the majority of the show was the only African-American dancer.
In one episode the dance instructor insinuated Nia’s thighs were evidence of her lack of training during breaks from the show.
In another episode, Miller told Nia’s mother, Holly to “fix” Nia’s hair, calling the child’s braids, horrible.
Other students who’s flaws were attacked on the show was Pressley Hosbach for her thighs in season eight, Lilliana Ketchman for her ‘fat feet’, Camryn Bridges for her discoloured feet, Ava Michelle for her “praying mantis” arms and for being too tall, Chloe Lukasiak for her eye (which was swapped out for Abby’s signature insult that the kid was “Washed up”) and another dancer
from the rival-team, Candy Apples for her ears.
Off camera, Miller’s body shaming continued in other harmful ways, like naming her students’ stomachs.
Miller admitted in an interview to displaying the dancers’ weight each week on a chart and making them jeté across the floor holding sacks of potatoes to show them what it would be like to gain weight.
Often when the mothers fought with Abby, they targeted her weight in retaliation.
In response to Miller’s comment about Nia’s hair, Holly Frasier told Miller to fix her hair and her body.
In another episode, Kelly Hyland simply told Abby to “stop eating” and that was why she was ‘fat’.
Since their time on the show, several of the dancers have disclosed on their social media platforms issues they had developed regarding their body image, including various eating disorders and body dysmorphia.
Chloe Lukasiak spoke candidly in a YouTube video about her personal struggle with Bulimia, anorexia nervosa and body dysmorphia.
Chloe’s eating issues began after the sudden lifestyle change that leaving the show presented as bulimia and later developed into anorexia.
While she felt a sense of control and fulfilment from her illness, Ms Lukasiak said her body dysmorphia was “out-of-this-world bad”.
“I was unfamiliar with what I saw in the mirror, and it was unacceptable in my eyes because of what society had taught me looked beautiful,” Ms Lukasiak said.
“It only clicked in the past few months that my body doesn’t actually look like what I think it looks like.”
During a season-four-episode confrontation, Chloe’s mother Christi Lukasiak told Cathy Nesbitt Stein she looked like she could skip a meal, to which Cathy retorted Christi’s backside looked “like a forty-dollar cow”.
ANXIETY
From the first week of season one, Abby pitted Maddie Zeigler and Chloe Lukasiak against each other in a rivalry for the top spot on the pyramid.
They were eight and nine years old.
Maddie’s ability to learn choreography faster than most of the other girls, edged her into the spotlight, as Abby’s clear favourite.
This set up the premise of the show as Chloe and every other team member endured constant comparison while Maddie appeared to receive preferential treatment.
This came at a cost for Maddie who reflects on her time on Dance Moms as a stressful environment where she often felt a lot of pressure to be the best and always win.
“In the back of my mind I always say I can’t forget this dance. I don’t want to be distracted. I can’t lose place or anything at all,” Maddie said during one Season two episode.
This followed a traumatic episode in which Maddie experienced every dancer’s nightmare.
She forgot her dance.
It was a moment no one expected when ran off the stage mid-performance in tears, hands shaking, begging the officials to let her do the dance again.
Her confidence shaken; she chose to bench her solo until she was ready.
Eager to please her dance teacher, Maddie’s biggest fear was that Abby would be upset or “hate” her for forgetting the dance.
It had not been the first time one of Abby’s dancers had forgotten a dance.
Usually, Abby berated her dancers for forgetting them and for crying about it and punished them by putting them lower on the pyramid.
A fight would often ensue between Abby and that dancer’s mother.
This time Abby embraced her distraught dancer and cried with him. This sparked another fight about preferential treatment.
Maddie was often seen in episodes fidgeting, close to tears and looking panicked, on the occasions Abby scolded her about something she or her mother, Melissa did.
Anxiety was common among many of the girls who would seize up during rehearsals or right before during or after their dances, due to their fear of disappointing Abby.
Aside from Maddie, anxiety seemed to affect Paige, Chloe, Nia, and Kendall the most.
During one episode the girls were asked to run their group dance individually, but when it was Paige Hyland’s turn, she clutched her chest in tears and unable to breathe.
When Abby began to pit new girl, Kendall Vertes against Chloe, both girls felt the pressure, but for Kendall it reached a particularly heightened state when the girls took turns running their solos.
Kendall was so worked up, when Abby dismissed her, Kendall began to hyperventilate.
BULLYING AND PSYCHOLOGICAL ABUSE
During the shows eight seasons, and in some cases after the show ended, the cast endured different instances and types of abuse from psychological and emotional abuse, exclusion, teasing and even witnessing physical violence.
It seemed no one had survived their time on the show without experiencing some type of abuse – even Abby whose weight often came under fire from the cast members.
Producers would often set up scenarios where a rival studio owner, Cathy Nesbitt-Stein, would bring an entourage of Candy Apples mothers into the ALDC dressing room to taunt or psych out Abby.
In one episode, they presented Abby with a cake that had a notorious picture of her face on it, knowing it from the season four fight with Kelly that resulted in a legal battle between Abby and the Hylands.
Their aim was to taunt Abby and the mothers after a Candy Apples win, which they knew would rile Abby up.
Abby’s retaliation led to the incident where Abby told one of the Candy Apples mothers to fears her daughter’s ears.
In another episode Cathy hit Abby with a purse after Abby threw water on Cathy.
In many of the episodes, Cathy would sit in the row behind Abby and continually poke and taunt her.
All these incidents happened in front of the younger cast members of the show.
The children were also witnesses to the infighting that went on between Abby and the mothers.
The most notorious incident was the forementioned fight between Abby and Kelly.
Abby had arranged for Maddie and newcomer, Kalani to perform in a duo together without telling the other mothers, raising suspicion.
Abby had already paired Paige and Chloe for a duo and the strategic last-minute addition of Maddie and Kalani into the competition meant the two duos would be competing against each other.
Accusations of Abby setting Chloe and Paige up to fail escalated into a physical fight Kelly pulling Abby’s weave out of her head.
Nia’s mother, Holly Frasier ushered the dancers out of the dressing room, as she often did when a fight would erupt, but it was too late.
All of them were distressed and crying.
Often some of the mothers would single out Maddie, one of the new dancers or a guest brought into the team.
With Maddie it was usually about Abby’s preferential treatment of her.
With the guest dancers, particularly those whose mother sought to make their child’s position on the team permanent, the ALDC mothers went out of their way to be extra critical of the new dancer, particularly because they were usually pitted against one of the original ALDC dancers.
Some of the worst cases were when Abby and the mothers snubbed Holly and Nia when Nia chose another manager instead of Abby to launch a singing career).
Even when Nia invited Kendall (who was launching her own music career with Abby’s management) to sing a duo with her in a launch event, Jill Vertes accused them of “rubbing Kendall’s nose in it”.
When Nia launched her first music video, Jojo Siwa was the only ALDC dancer present to support her.
While the mothers attended without an RSVP, the rest of the dancers were absent due to a prior commitment – not allowed or encouraged to skip for this occasion.
In another particularly awful incident during pyramid, Ashlee Allen taunted Jill by bragging that her daughter, Brynn Rumfalo had a better week (in competition) than Kendall.
“It’s all over social media,” Ashlee said, sparking another of the many arguments between Ashlee and Jill.
This resulted in a tearful outburst from Kendall to Ashlee for being “so mean”, before storming out of the studio with her mother in tow.
Sometimes their criticisms were due to a disliking towards the guest mother, rather than of the child, as was the cases of Christy Hunt, Leslie Ackerman, and Kaya “Black Patsy” Wiley (who later joined the Candy Apples and acted somewhat as a henchman for Cathy).
These guest mothers gave back to the ALDC mothers as good as they got, with the fights escalating to physical brawls in the studio or in the street.
Every time these fights happened, Abby would punish the dancers by pulling them out of the group dance, scratching their solo or the duo they were in and placing them towards the bottom of the pyramid the following week.
In an interview with Rosie O’Donnell, Abby admitted to the intentional bullying of Chloe.
She said that when she found out that due to their six-year contract, she couldn’t kick them out of the studio and they couldn’t leave, that she would say and do whatever she wanted to them.
Abby pitted Chloe and Kendall against each other to be her number two girl on the team, but continued to put Chloe down on air.
In one episode Abby refused to call Chloe by her name – instead call her “you” or “what’s your name”.
In many episodes when Chloe won a competition, Abby would petition the judges to have her scores changed, taking away her win.
Once, after making Chloe and Maddie perform the same solo against eachother in a competition, which Chloe won, Abby was successful in having Chloe and Maddie’s scores reviewed, citing an anomaly in one of the categories.
The episode ended with a tearful Chloe telling the camera that she was “really happy for Maddie”.
“I never wanted Chloe to win, but she won all the time,” Abby said to another contestant’s mother in a later season.
This saw the decline of Chloe’s passion for dance.
Often Abby would berate the child for their mother’s behaviour which would cause undue distress on that child during rehearsals or before a performance.
In one incident, Abby threw a chair on the ground in front of Paige, because it was still wet painted fresh with a marker and had no rubber stoppers on the legs.
This caused Kelly to flip Abby off and curse at her from the atrium where the mothers sat to view the dancers.
Abby continued to berate and shame Paige for her mother’s behaviour.
The result was Kelly’s fat-shaming incident as Kelly pulled a tearful Paige and her other daughter, Brook out of the week’s dances, and stormed out of the studio.
There were even times when the girls bullied each other.
Even though, Nia maintains a close friendship with most of her teammates, after leaving the show, Nia mentioned the exclusion she often felt from the other girls on the show.
Kalani and Maddie particularly mocked Jojo’s speech impediment at a meet and greet, as they mimicked her bragging and her promise to get the girls free merch from her sponsors –something that Kalani’s mother Kira Girard had done in front of the girls during pyramid in another episode.
When Kendall, Brynn, Nia, Kalani and Camryn Bridges left the ALDC to form their own troupe, The Irreplaceables, without Abby, Brynn accused the other girls of bullying her into doing choreography that made her feel uncomfortable, before re-joining the ALDC.
Chloe who had joined another rival team, Studio 19, reunited with her original team, replacing Brynn.
Christi Lukasiak’s return to the show was not without drama, which had resulted in a public showdown with the ALDC mothers in the previous season.
The mothers patched up their drama for the same of their girls when Chloe joined the team and soon, they transferred their war with Ashlee, Abby, the new mothers, and her Mini-team to social media – mainly twitter and Instagram.
RACISM
By June 2020 the show set to air for a nineth season was officially cancelled when the network severed ties with Miller due to multiple racist slurs made towards some the ethnic dancers both on and off the show.
Telling Holly to fix Nia’s braids was not the only time Abby directed a racist slur or micro-aggression towards a black cast-member on the show.
For a long time, Nia was the only black dancer on the team and often Abby and the producers subjected her to tokenism by always giving her ethnic dancers and only casting her as the lead when the part required a black dancer to portray the character.
Abby rarely gave Nia solos.
Although Nia’s tribute dance to Maya Angelo was a season four highlight and possibly Nia’s series highlight, it was a typical example of Abby’s push for Nia to do what she called “ethnic” dancers.
Nia’s earlier solos, however, weren’t as tasteful tributes to ethnic culture as the Goodbye Maya and often portrayed derogatory stereotypes.
In one dance, Nia wore a dog costume, complete with a collar and when trying it on, Abby told Nia to bark like a dog.
This was an underhanded response from Abby to Holly’s comment that Abby never corrected Nia without barking orders at her.
For another dance Nia was given a Bollywood style costume and choreography.
The worst offending solo was Nia’s Laquifa solo, where she impersonated African-American drag queen, Shangela, dressed in a leopard-print costume.
“Why is my daughter the only one dressed in animal print?” Holly said in a comment to the camera during that episode.
She said all the other girls got costumes that didn’t typecast them.
When Holly questioned Abby’s choice to put her African-American daughter in animal print, pointing out the racial implications that were stacking up in Nia’s rare solo, Abby added insult to injury by telling Holly to add an afro to the costume.
“Holly wants her daughter to be like every other little girl,” Abby said, attempting to justify her questionable decision.
She said that her ethnicity gave her an advantage over other dancers, because she could play different ethnicities.
“Different is good,” she said.
“I don’t want to be a stereotype from the 70s, wearing an afro,” Holly said, comparing it to having Nia picking cotton or wearing an Aunt Jemima scarf on her head.”
“We have worked very hard to get beyond that. For me it’s very political,” she said when Kelly tried to dismiss it as Holly being dramatic.
“Politics is all about who has the power and who has the control.”
When Abby announced that the team would be dancing a tribute to Rosa Parks, she used the role of Rosa Parks as a manipulative tool against Holly and Nia, by telling her not to assume she would cast Nia.
Abby even entertained the idea Jill pitched, that if she wasn’t going to cast Nia, the role “might as well go to Kendall”, sparking an outrage among the other mothers.
“You should go down and tell Abby you thought Rosa Parks was somebody different,” Kelly told Jill, highlighting the woman’s ignorance.
Eventually Abby officially cast Nia in the role, saying she had always intended to give Nia the role but wanted Nia to work for it.
Abby’s racism extended to Camryn, whom she told the bottom of her feet were ugly and Adriana Smith and daughter Kamryn who appeared as guests during season eight, and with whom Abby asserted her white upper middle-class privilege.
“I know you grew up in the hood with only a box of eight crayons, but I grew up in the Country Club with a box of sixty-four – don’t be stupid,” Abby told Adriana.
SEXUALISATION
Finally, the dancers were over-worked and exploited for entertainment, despite child labour law and were often sexualised.
Many of Abby and the producers skimpy costume choices came under public scrutiny due to the suggestive image they portrayed.
There was the infamous school-girl costume that originally included fishnets, that Abby relented on when all of the mothers objected to their child wearing a costume that would attract predators.
“When Abby walks in with those costumes, all I’m thinking is ‘this is like prosti-tots the sequel’,” Christy said.
One dancer, Peyton Ackerman even had large hole in the stockings to make her look ‘trashy’ and set her apart as the bully.
“Bully and bad girl is different from trashy,” Leslie said.
The dancers were between nine and fourteen years old, during that season.
Later in the season the girls were forced to wear an even more inappropriate costume as showgirls.
The only things concealing their flesh-coloured costumes were the large fans each girl used as a prop in a risqué dance that made many of the girls and their mothers feel uncomfortable.
After many complaints written into the network, the episode was pulled from all re-releases of Dance Moms and never aired again.
A few episodes later despite the controversy, the girls appeared in flesh tone costumes again as they took the stage.
This time there was no fan to hide their perceived nakedness.
During season four, Abby paired Maddie with Geno Cosculluela for a musical theatre piece which would end with a kiss.
This made Maddie especially feel uncomfortable because it would be her first kiss.
What made it worse was Abby grabbed the girl by the cheeks and pecked her on the mouth.
When Maddie practiced the dance with Geno, she gave him a nervous peck and ran, red-faced from the studio.
Under pressure from Abby, with whom there was already established power-imbalance, Maddie and Geno performed their due in the competition, ending their dance with the kiss.
Neither was able to hide their embarrassment.
DANCE MUMS AUSTRALIA
When asked why she would want to bring a show like Dance Moms to the Australian public, Nikki Webster expressed a desire to create opportunities for young dancers in Australia.
Nikki had observed the popularity of the US show among Australian audiences.
“We are supporting the artists that are coming out of [the US Show], so why can’t we create that in our own country and create an opportunity for these dancers to have a platform across the world to showcase their skills,” Nikki said.
“My idea is to put dance in this country on the world map. This will only enhance the industry in this country.”
The entertainer began her career as the face of the 2000 Sydney Olympics, said she was “super proud” to turn her focus onto teaching and creating an avenue for Australian dancers to gain a platform.
“I think we have some of the best talent in the world,” she said.
While she agreed that the US show focused so heavily on the “mom drama” in some seasons that showcasing the kids’ dancing was left out, Webster expressed the need for light and shade in the show in the form of conflict.
“We need the crazy mums and dads, and it will be high pressure.”
The Strawberry Kisses singer said she expected it to be a short shooting schedule with many challenges “thrown” at her and her dancers.
Two years and a global pandemic later, the lack of news updates on the show’s progress or a possible airdate suggest the idea was an all but forgotten casualty of public backlash.
PURPOSE
This article was used for an assessment in December 2022 with the view of inclusion on this WordPress page.
It went through the rigorous early stages of planning, workshopping, and editing.
It is the sort of article appear as a feature piece in gossip magazines or newspaper entertainment lift-outs.
In addition to my purpose would be to develop the article into a script for a series of YouTube videos about these individual cases.
For this article, I spent a day or two reading a wide variety of publications and watching relevant YouTube accounts, and another day or two writing, reading further to fact-check for accuracy.
Each source is adequately attributed.
Furious Fiction
Recently I’ve began to “throw my hat into the submission ring” more, starting with Furious Fiction.
I’ve decided to post these stories once judging wraps each month. This is where you can find my first ever entry, Late night Soup plus any future entered pieces as I release them.
All rights pertaining to this image belongs to The Australian Writer’s Centre and is borrowed courtesy of their website.
I am not a paid promoter or affiliated with the organisation beyond submitting my writing to Furious Fiction.
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My First School Bully
Picture a younger Patti Farrell, the teacher’s pet in Diary of a Wimpy Kid, the long brown braided pigtails, straight cut bangs and the sweeter-than-honey smile that turned to a scowl every time she directed her attention to the main character, Greg. She went out of her way to make his life misery and the monster from my year one class was identical in every way and every bit as awful. Her name was Natalie Teliszczak.
Now that I’ve painted a good picture of her, now picture angelic looking five-year-old-almost-six me – bespectacled blue eyes, blond hair braided in tight pigtails, tied with ribbons that matched my brand-new school dress, stark white knee-high socks (it was the 80’s after all) and little black sneakers. Little Sheree Dyson embarked on her education journey in style.
Both girls were pretty as a picture, both appeared to be the ones whose mothers must’ve cared the most about first impressions, both were intelligent and eager to start this wonderful intellectual stewardship – I had been singing and writing the ABC’s all through Pre-school and now I was ready to make words out of them, other than just my name, which I’d already been writing for six months at least.
Sheree and Natalie were sat at the same table on our first day. I think Tim Ellem, my cousin, and my Preschool bestie, Charlene Burgess were put on other tables because I don’t remember them there at mine. I also remember Bradley Fleming, the littlest boy the class, who I think looking back, had a large case of chihuahua complex, Angela Griffiths and Brooke Tayler – both of whom were nice, but I barely remember them.
So there I was on my first day, sat with no one I knew or felt comfortable with, finding out very early in the day that my two biggest bullies of year one were sat at my table and there would be not a thing I could do about it.
Maths was the most un-memorable struggle. It was always a struggle, but that first day Natalie’s constant nit-picking at my struggles only exacerbated it. I could parrot as fast as everyone else when we counted the numbers and recited the one-plus-ones the two-plus-twos and so on, but then came the workbook exercises. I’m not sure what Little Miss Perfect by my right found more offensive, my poor handwriting skills or the time I took to work out the maths problems, but she picked that moment to broadcast my inept abilities to whoever could hear her.
“Sheree’s so dumb. Sheree can’t write the numbers. Sheree doesn’t know one-plus-seven.” Then came Natalie’s worst piece of ammunition, that morning. “Sheree is retarded.” That one, Bradley Fleming latched onto like a savage chihuahua on a German-shepherd’s ankle and never let go.
Both carried this on all through “little-lunch” the first break of the day.
“Don’t sit with us, we don’t let retards sit with us,” Natalie said when I tried to join all the girls to drink my juice-popper and eat my strawberry yogurt. The boys sitting nearby heard it all and laughed. Bradley made sure to let all the boys know why it was so funny to pick on this one poor little girl who only wanted to learn and make friends.
I sat with those girls anyway and while Natalie continued to berate my every flaw as a five-year old miniature human, I focused on my juice and my yogurt and the tears that flowed down my cheeks as I internalised every word. The only comfort through my twenty minutes of hell was Charlene Burgess, who tried to comfort me. We remained friends for the rest of the year until she left that school.
When we returned to the classroom, I remember the reading activity, which consisted of following the audio cassette reading of Winnie-the-Pooh’s adventure with the balloon and the honey tree and we were given a little sheet with part of the story and a picture of poor Pooh hanging from a balloon, up the tree, outside a beehive, holding on to his empty honey pot. The picture was just a black outline that awaited enthusiastic colouring according to the descriptions we heard on the cassette.
This was something I thought I could do with ease, and I was glad after such a rough morning of maths struggle and “little lunch” tears. There was one thing I knew well was colours and I had the biggest imagination even as a five-year-old and could picture the story as a technicolour movie in my mind.
I picked out the blue crayon from my new pack. I’d never used them before, so they were different from the coloured pencils I was used to using at home. Still, I worked that waxy colouring instrument and like magic the white balloon was blue. I put the crayon back and dug out the yellow to colour Pooh’s body. Then I coloured Pooh’s little red shirt, so focused on bringing the little bear to life that I didn’t care what anyone else around me was doing – not on Bradley who I later saw had covered his whole sheet in scribble, not on Brook or Angela who had completed their pages acceptably adequate. Even Natalie’s perfectly coloured picture didn’t catch my attention, until mine captured hers.
“Look at Sheree’s picture. It’s so messy!” She said, laughing as she pointed at the edge of my balloon. “Look! Sheree can’t even colour inside the lines!”
“Ha-ha, Four-eyes can’t see the lines. She must be retarded.” It was the smartest thing Bradley Fleming ever said and it stuck to me like the honey to Pooh’s pot for the rest of the day and many days to follow.
The more they taunted the more the picture of Pooh blurred into a mess of colour through my tearstained glasses. The picture I loved so much at the start of the activity was discarded, unfinished that day but the memory of it remains etched in my mind as I think back to that first day and the twelve years of bullying that followed.
I finished year one, already broken. The open emotional wounds were never left alone long enough to heal, as more and more insult were poured into them and left to fester under my cracked skin.
She was only in my class that year and though the bullies’ faces, and names changed through the years and though the taunts also evolved, the worthless feeling Natalie left me with, with help from Bradley, remained like untreated wounds through the following years.
Even during the holidays when my wounds had a small window of opportunity to scar, it was only temporary. Every new term, those scars were re-opened and more hurtful words were poured in to fester in the dry old scabs. When you pick the same emotional scars for years and years, never giving them a chance to heal, they become permanent reminders of the trauma.
They are my battle-scars now—Invisible but ever-so-permanent reminders that I faced emotional trauma day after day. Some days I was a mess of tears and meltdowns, unable to deal with the verbal axes thrown my way and other days I was a warrior of wit, using my best ammunition – words to fight my battles.
I found myself thinking of Natalie, the other day, and wondered where she ended up in life. I found her on Facebook with the same last name – an average-looking mother of three immaculately-groomed teenaged girls. I wondered as I swiped through the pictures, if they perpetuated the cycle of mean-girl mentality.
She posted pictures of the most hideously painted terracotta pots I’ve ever seen in my life. If they were painted by anyone else, I would’ve admired the colours she used and the way they blended, but this was Natalie who only found fault in my colouring, and I felt no desire other than to nit-pick every pot. They were the only clues that revealed the woman Natalie became. There were some old childhood photos of her with her parents and that was it.
My finger hovered over the “add friend” button temporarily, but then tapped the top left-hand arrow and backspaced out of her profile. I had no desire to reconnect with the woman who was once the awful pigtailed brat at the end of my table in year one, who succeeded at her sole mission – to destroy my self-confidence and make my first day of year one hell.
As far as I was concerned, Natalie could stay that way in my mind, just a figment of a memory in my past forever where she can no longer do me harm.
My Autistic Brain is a Fuzzy TV
Imagine when you turn on an old television, there’s a light button next to the power button, an according to that, the TV is just fine. However, the screen is flickering, but there is no picture, just a lot of grain. Static grain.
You try to change the channel… but nothing.
You try to tune it… but again, nothing.
So, you turn it off and on again, hoping that by some miracle, the last few minutes are not wasted and that a picture will magically appear. It doesn’t.
So, you talk to it, plead with it to “just work” so you can watch your favourite show. It doesn’t.
You give it a tap as you coax it again. It still doesn’t.
Frustrated, you smack the thing, and it stings your hand. As if mocking you, the TV still flickers… but no picture.
You turn up the volume to see if you have sound. The TV hisses at you, and it’s now that you really start to lose it.
You turn it off and on at the wall, but you get the same result.
You shift the aerial in hopeless desperation, but it’s no use. The TV is not working.
You walk outside and look to the roof. The outside aerial is still where it should be.
Feeling defeated, you call someone out to fix the dead TV. Yet when they get there, and you go to demonstrate what’s wrong with the TV, you switch it on… and HALLELUJAH! There’s a perfect picture and sound…
Like nothing was even wrong.
That’s what it’s like for me when I have an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) day or Moment. It is like my brain shuts down and I can’t think of focus and when I try to function, everything in me is fuzzy.
I freeze and I try to regroup, but it’s no use. When I’m flustered it triggers a complete shutdown.
All m thoughts circulate at such a rapid pace that I can’t hear anything other than chaos.
All the while, my poor body is waiting for something to do but is lost in the confusion. So, I start fidgeting and I begin to struggle with breathing. It’s like I’ve forgotten how, and with a small voice fighting through the madness in my brain, I am screaming at myself to breathe.
When I get like this, I really have no choice but to stop and walk away from a situation that might’ve triggered this.
I have to employ all distraction techniques I have within, to calm everything down.
Then when have started to calm myself, I ask myself if whatever it was that triggered this, is worth returning to and persevering with. Sadly (when it’s something I have to do), sometimes the answer is yes, I must, and like the TV miraculously working again, I power on through it.
When it’s over and I’ve achieved a desired outcome, I feel accomplished, because it’s a new skill I can add to my frame of reference.
Stop Withholding Self Worth – Normalise Loving Our Bodies for What They Are
***Trigger Warning Body Issues and Mental Health*** If you feel this article may cause harm to your mental health please skip it.
Today I found myself hating on my legs for the way hair grows there. All I could see was coarse black, ‘man’ hair.
I’m a woman and though by today’s standards I am failing miserably at being a woman, I saw this moment for what it was – self loathing, hating on the miraculous thing that my creator gave me for the the things society has deemed unacceptable.
It’s the same as weight. People say maybe when you lose weight you’ll feel more confident and comfortable in your body – No! That should be now regardless of what it looks like or what the tags on my clothes say or what colour hair grows back on my legs.
I am me and self worth shouldn’t be conditional according to body standards.
We need to normalise loving ourselves and our bodies and not withholding that love until some unattainable standard is met.
We need to stop telling girls and women that their worth is in their looks.
Sure. Promote healthy bodies but don’t let a tag or a number on a scale define what that is.
Normalise healthy choices not diet culture.
Normalise the love of movement and dance and sport, not the grind of body-sculpting and shaving kilos off in a gym to attain that standard.
If you love it, do it if you don’t, find something else you love. Don’t shame yourself or others who do or don’t.
We need to stop bodyshaming people into that grind, and telling people they’re too fat or ugly or whatever to do what they love.
Stop telling people that they should be spending more time in a gym than dancing or doing another sport they love just because their body jiggles in places others don’t.
It’s ugly and it’s damaging.
Stop telling women that they need to dress a certain way or do their hair and make-up a certain way or shave certain body parts (or not shave).
The beauty and the fashion industries are multi billion dollar industries that thrive on people making self-worth conditional and the fitness industry is not far behind.
Anyway. Rant over.
I love my legs again. They are what they are because they work. They get me from a to b.
I have to be thankful for that.
The Dog Needs A Girlfriend
The dog needs a girlfriend.
I’m covered again in slobber,
Not a dry spot on my head.
It’s on my ears and all over.
He’s in my space again.
Mum, I think it’s time,
For you sort this problem.
He needs help, poor guy.
The dog needs a girlfriend.
It’s not that I don’t love him.
But how do I explain?
He gets under my skin.
He’s at it all bloody day.
Hell is a slobbery dog kiss.
The torture never ends.
Mum, you’ve got to stop this!
The dog needs a girlfriend.
When all I want is peace
So I can close my eyes.
He just won’t leave me be.
I’ve nowhere I can hide.
We’re family, a gang, a pack.
But I cannot pretend
To love the dog, not like that.
The dog needs a girlfriend.
So for the sake of unity
Between canine and feline,
For the sake of my sanity
Mum, please, I think it’s time,
Before I sound my warning hiss
And sink my molars in again,
I can’t reciprocate his bliss.
The dog needs a girlfriend.
Why Luke and Lorelai’s Wedding Was Perfect
Gilmore Girls wedding was perfect for lead characters, Luke and Lorelai; leaves fans relieved but divided.
After nine years off the air, fans witnessed the wedding for the Gilmore Girls’ key couple. While they were relieved to see a resolution to the will-thy-or-won’t-they drama that plagued the seven seasons, but left hanging in the finale, many who expected the grand affair they missed out on in the original series, felt cheated, however knowing the couple at the heart of the feel-good drama, the ending of the reboot was poetic with the perfect wedding – for them.
“…she flitted from relationship to relationship, heartbreak to heartbreak…”
He was the man who poured her coffee and served her burgers and pie. The was the man who fixed her porch, brought her food at the hospital when her father was sick – twice, and helped her search for a lost baby chicken called Stella.
All the while, Luke Danes secretly pined for single mother, Lorelai Gilmore, while she flitted from relationship to relationship, heartbreak to heartbreak. and for seven years, audiences watched and waited for them to get it together and finally find happiness.
“There’s a chemistry there. Over time they really connect… but it took a while to get there.”
As the show, Gilmore Girls, crossed thethreshold from the 90’s to the early 21st century, the pair’s relationship crossed the threshold from customer, diner/owner to friends, and finally after four seasons, a couple. Finally, Lorelai (played by Lauren Graham) found in Luke (Scott Patterson), someone who didn’t trigger her infamous urge to bolt.
“His gruffness brings out her, sort of, flirtatiousness,” Lauren Graham told Entertainment Weekly. “There’s a chemistry there. Over time they really connect. They need each other as balance; she lightens him up and he roots her a little bit, but it took a while to get there.”
Their relationship had not blossomed, without many hurdles, some that halted the beginning of their romance. There was a delinquent nephew (Jess – Milo Ventimiglia), his mother (Luke’s flakey sister Liz – Kathleen Wilhoite), who later became the catalyst for their transition from friends to lovers. Plus, there were brief flings with Rachel (Lisa Ann Hadley) and Nicole (Tricia O’Kelley), and the discovery of a daughter (April – Vanessa Marano), which brought more complication as Luke tried in vain to compartmentalize his life.
Add Lorelai’s controlling Mother, Emily (Kelly Bishop) and her revolving romances withMax (Scott Cohen), Jason (Chris Eigeman), Alex (Billy Burke) and high school sweetheart and father of her daughter Rory (Alexis Bledel), Christopher (David Sutcliff) and what appears to be a disaster could only resultin doom for Luke and Lorelai’s relationship.
Still they make it as far as ‘set in stone’ wedding plans for an affair fitfor a Gilmore and a short-lived, tumultuous engagement (Lorelai proposed), that ended with an ultimatum and a rendezvous between Lorelai and Christopher.
“… it really was a fantasy land…”
Everything appeared to line up for them, with Lorelai’s whirlwind planning of the particulars, that included a rose covered church with an 1850’s carousel, a reception hall, catered with duck sausage rolls, daisies and daisy themed invitations, and the perfect strapless tulle dress with the cream satin sash. Even the date suited their plans – the only day with no clashes, which Lorelai relayed to a gobsmacked Luke.
Naturally, the show’s ending left fans high and dry, despite a reconciliation between the pair, following Lorelai’s glowing character reference for Luke, the end of her impulse marriage to Christopher and karaoke serenade. No dream wedding happened between these characters and for nine years, the show left fans wondering what had become of its ultimate ‘will-they-or-won’t-they’ couple.
News of a revival, of the show, renewed interest in the outcome for Lorelai and Luke and the November 25, 2016 release of Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life, saw the couple not engaged, not married nor with the family they had both dreamed of, but stuck in limbo, in a relationship, as ‘glorified room-mates’ as Emily commented during a therapy session.
Finally, the show ended with the wedding, fans were relieved to see eventuate. The ceremony aired was a far cry from the one planned in season 6, and was nothing like the one they discussed at the end of the final episode of the four-part re-boot, “Fall”, that included flash-mobs, a hot-dog cart, the perfect dress, a suit with a pocket square – a foreign concept for Luke, and Keifer Sutherland on the invite list. Budget constraints led to an elaborate elopement that left fans divided.
“… dancers, a floral decorated Volkswagen Beetle, maze-like drapery and tall floral hedges, … fairy lights, fancy bowler hats, and an odd-shaped old door with a rustic key…”
After Kirk, the town ‘weirdo’ bursts into the Gilmore house and storms up the stairs to throw up in the upstairs bathroom, screaming, “It’s all ruined!”, audiences learn that he had been in charge of orchestrating the decoration of the town square for the wedding. After another of Lorelai’s impulse decisions, Luke and Lorelai, take Rory and sneak out to elope. Kirk receives the text, “IT’S PERFECT!” from Lorelai.
In a red carpet interview with Access Hollywood reporter, Lauren Graham, was reluctant to reveal too much, ““I think the way it’s handled, for these two, is just perfect.”
The show ends with a Steampunk Alice in Wonderland type affair, where only a small cluster of the show’s cast was present. While this left some audiences awe-struck, other’s felt unresolved having missed out on the grand affair, alluded to in previous scenes.
“… the way it’s handled, for these two, is just perfect…”
Scott Patterson told People Magazine, “Absolutely, the set was so beautifully constructed, it really was a fantasy land.”
There were dancers, a floral decorated Volkswagen Beetle, maze-like drapery and tall floral hedges, pink and tungsten fairy lights, fancy bowler hats, and an odd-shaped old door with a rustic key. Adding to the magic was a light shower of snow, fitting for a character who infamously reads snow as an omen.
“… Luke was to wear a suit and Lorelai would wear a wedding gown…”
With the pressure removed, they could enjoy their official wedding – the one audiences don’t see without the looming vow exchange or painful memories of their first ‘go-round’.
“… Why wasn’t the Chuppa in the Wedding!?!? …”
Of course the main reason this was the wedding audiences saw was due to budget constraints placed on the production, leaving the husband and wife writing team, Dan, and Amy (Sherman-) Palladino scrambling for a low budget alternative that would still finish the show on a high.
Still fans lamented for the wedding they never saw, particularly some of the key characters’ absences. Most noted was Emily, April and the chuppah Luke had made for Lorelai and Max’s wedding. “Why wasn’t the chuppah in the wedding!?!?” one fan posted on Twitter.
QIHreGG:AYITL #37:what was the intra-story explanation for April’s absence from wedding? Just that she’s the worst? #sillygillypartypeople
— That dog is nice (@thatdogisnice) November 28, 2016
BUT WHY WASN’T THE CHUPPAH IN THE WEDDING !?!? #AYITL #chuppah #BUTWHY
— Libby Cavanagh (@libbycavanagh) November 29, 2016
“… I wanna see the real L&L wedding …” Another drew parallels between Gilmore Girls and Bishops other show, Bunheads and her absences from both show’s weddings.
notice any parallels between Bunheads & AYITL? 1 I saw – ASP doesn’t let Bishop’s characters attend their kids’ weddings.
— Abby Perry (@abbyjperry) January 12, 2017
Yeah, I agree! I would love to see more! I wanna see the real L&L wedding (I do love the one in AYITL though)
— KAYLA/TORONTO 24 DAYS 🙌🏻💕 (@kgibson97315) August 26, 2017
“I wanna see the rea L&L wedding…” This post summed up many the responses from disgruntled fans. Even the price of Lorelai’s dress came under scrutiny. “That’s all Lorelai Gilmore’s … dress was worth … ? Y’all … gonna wind up divorced,” was a fan’s response. but in many ways their wedding was perfect for them. Luke was a simple character, with reclusive tendencies, who preferred routine, and took a no-fuss approach to life, while Lorelai, who had escaped the high-class world of her childhood, to forge a life for herself, had a quirky taste in home décor, music, movies and fashion, and fiercely protected her independence from that world.
$400. That’s all Lorelai Gilmore’s wedding dress was worth to her. Y’all Javajunkie is gonna wind up divorced. pic.twitter.com/ujAK5S6DaH
— meghan (@themeghanwalsh) March 7, 2018
Lorelai Gilmore and the perfect wedding dress. . . *sigh* http://twitpic.com/3kh5bc
— Shelby (@ShelbyJaimeHuff) December 28, 2010
Y’all ever think about Lorelai’s wedding in the Fall Season of Gilmore Girls AYITL and cry a bit
— Katie! (@katieshifu) May 5, 2017
This was a woman who preferred monkey lamps, coffee and Poptarts, over chandeliers, fancy banquets and high tea and a man who likes to keep his empire small. Both were infamous in the original series, for their impulsiveness and for bolting at the last minute. In a show characteristically full of Pop-culture references and zany personalities, a stuffy formal affair, even one with flash-mobs and an open hotdog cart, would not have suited the two at the centre of the occasion.
Very little is revealed about the planned wedding, but it was to take place during the town’s Harvest Festival and include a huge guest list of people from the town, especially Emily Gilmore, inn co-owner, Sookie (Melissa McCarthy) and Luke’s old fishing buddy, Keifer. Luke was to wear a suit and Lorelai would wear a wedding gown.
Instead they are both dressed in black, and in the final scene, Lorelai is sipping wine with Rory on the Gazebo steps, at dawn on the official wedding day, overlooking the town.
What does it mean when a guy says he doesn’t like you anymore? I ended my friendship with him and he said he understood.
I have been in this situation, myself and I can tell you it’s not an easy one to just ‘move on’ from. It doesn’t matter how good the friendship, when ‘feelings’ get in the way and are not reciprocated, or they change their mind, the difficult decision to make is to stay in the friendship and try to move past it or wait for that friend to change their mind, or to walk away from the friendship or take a break from that person.
It sounds like you’ve gone with option B which (though hurts the most) is healthy in the long run. More
Cre8ive Flare 