Yesterday I watched people discussing Janet Jackson's famous glide across the stage at the BET Awards. Some talked about years of dance train
Yesterday I watched people discussing Janet Jackson’s famous glide across the stage at the BET Awards.
Some talked about years of dance training, rhythm, balance, and incredible control over her body.
Others reduced it to crude sexual comments that are supposed to sound complimentary.
That difference says something worth paying attention to.
Women know this experience.
A woman spends years becoming excellent at something. She becomes a gifted athlete. A talented dancer. A runner. A weightlifter. A gymnast. A martial artist. A mechanic. A welder. A surgeon.
Yet somehow, her body part becomes the headline instead of her skill.
A dancer spends thousands of hours and years learning how to isolate her hips, strengthen her core, control every muscle, and move with precision.
Some people don’t see discipline. They see something to sexualize.
A runner develops powerful legs. Someone comments on her thighs.
A volleyball player dives for a ball. Someone is watching her shorts instead of the game.
A gymnast performs an almost impossible routine. People argue about whether her uniform is “distracting.” (I just learned that some female gymnasts were forbidden from wearing underwear in those tiny little uniforms)
A woman bends to lift a heavy box at work. Someone turns ordinary movement into an invitation that never existed.
It happens so often that many women stop noticing how exhausting it is.
Imagine practicing a craft for twenty years only to have strangers ignore the craft and comment on your body.
Imagine becoming one of the greatest performers of your generation and hearing more discussion about what lies between your legs than the fact that years of dedicated skill development are what still allow you to appear to glide when you walk.
That isn’t appreciation. It’s reduction. There is a difference between recognizing beauty and refusing to see anything beyond it. They don’t do this to the men on ESPN awards.
Women are human beings before they are objects of attraction.
Our bodies move because we are living.
Because we work.
Because we create.
Because we compete.
Because we dance.
Because we carry children.
Because we carry groceries.
Because we survive.
Movement is one of the oldest expressions of human intelligence.
A skilled dancer isn’t simply “moving her hips.”
She is demonstrating timing, balance, strength, flexibility, coordination, musicality, endurance, and years of relentless practice.
Those qualities deserve to be seen.
Janet Jackson’s movement is a good example of this distinction. Dancers often admire:
- her timing,
- her hip isolation,
- her grounded posture,
- her effortless weight transfers,
- and her ability to make technically difficult movement look natural.
It’s also worth noting that women with naturally greater hip mobility can appear to have a more fluid gait even when simply walking. Female pelvises generally have greater range of motion than male pelvises, and years of dance training amplify that.
There’s another social dimension as well. Women performers have long had their technical ability described in sexual rather than athletic terms. A basketball player’s footwork, a boxer’s hips, or a sprinter’s stride are usually discussed as skill. A female performer’s hip movement is more likely to be described as seduction, even when it reflects thousands of hours of practice.
This conversation reaches far beyond entertainment.
Girls learn very early that excellence does not always protect them from being reduced to their bodies.
Sometimes the better they become, the more attention shifts away from what they accomplished and toward how they looked accomplishing it.
That lesson can make girls smaller.
It can make women hesitate before celebrating their own strength.
It can make someone wonder whether there is any point in becoming exceptional if the world keeps insisting on looking somewhere else.
Thankfully, many people do see women differently. They notice the discipline before the appearance. They recognize mastery before attraction. They understand that athleticism, creativity, and beauty can exist together without one erasing the other.
Perhaps that’s the challenge for all of us.
To become better at seeing women as whole human beings.
To admire excellence without reducing it.
To recognize years of work before making assumptions about intention.
Sometimes a walk is simply the product of extraordinary training.
Sometimes a movement is choreography.
Sometimes strength is just strength.
Women deserve to have our gifts recognized before our bodies are interpreted.
And perhaps that is one of the deepest forms of respect: seeing the person before projecting a story onto her.
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