The Tudor Dixon Podcast: Exposing the Over-Sexualization of Kids in Dance

Summary

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The Tudor Dixon Podcast: Exposing the Over-Sexualization of Kids in Dance

Air Date: February 23, 2026
Host: Tudor Dixon
Guest: Mary Bawden (Dance educator & founder, Dance Awareness: No Child Exploited)

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Episode Overview

This episode of The Tudor Dixon Podcast centers on the growing concern of over-sexualization in children’s dance, a topic deeply relevant to parents, educators, and anyone engaging with youth activities. Tudor Dixon—herself a mother of four daughters with a family background in dance—invites Mary Bawden, an experienced dance educator, to discuss how children’s dance has shifted from a wholesome, developmental activity to one that can expose young performers to hypersexualized content. Emphasizing practical steps, awareness, and advocacy, this conversation tackles issues from cultural change in dance, dangers of social media exposure, parental responsibility, and the tools available for finding healthy dance programs for children.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Personal Stories & The Cultural Shift in Dance

• Dance’s Role in Family & Childhood: Tudor shares her personal and family experiences in dance, highlighting how her grandmother and sister found purpose and joy through it.
• Growing Discomfort at Recitals: Tudor recounts moments where "my husband said, 'I feel uncomfortable. Like, I feel like I shouldn’t be here,'" upon noticing the sexualized performances at children’s dance events (06:24).
• Changing Norms: Mary, an advocate and educator, identifies a cultural shift from "healthy, educational children’s dance to harmful, hypersexualized children’s dance in adult costumes, choreography, and music" (05:44), attributing this in part to broader media and internet influences rather than the dance industry itself.

2. Risks of Over-Sexualization in Dance

• Predators and Social Media: Mary emphasizes that "dance is unregulated. Anybody can open up a dance studio... There isn't even a requirement for a background check" (07:42), warning that shared dance videos (by studios or parents) are easily accessed and misused by predators online.
• Imitation & Brain Science: Both discuss how kids "copy what we see," referencing "mirror neurons," and warning that exposure to hypersexualized dances by older children sets inappropriate standards for younger ones (10:47).

3. Parent Awareness & Responsibility

• The Thirst Trap Wake-Up Call: Tudor shares a shocking conversation with her 14-year-old daughter who casually referenced a friend posting "thirst traps" on TikTok, highlighting how "if you think your 14-year-old doesn’t know, you’re dead wrong" (12:55).
• Sharenting and Self-Image: The concept of "sharenting"—parents frequently sharing images and videos of their kids online—is discussed as a source of risk and as something which can set unhealthy goals for children's self-esteem and online behavior (24:17).

4. What Is Healthy vs. Harmful Dance?

Mary provides clear guidelines to help parents and educators distinguish between the two:

• Healthy Dance: "Children look like children in age-appropriate costumes, choreography, and music... with joy and happiness."
• Harmful Dance: "Children look like adults in adult costumes, choreography, and music... with adult hairstyles and makeup and not much joy. Lots of come hither looks, sexualized movement" (19:56).
• She references the APA's definition: A child is sexualized when "they’re valued only for their sexual appeal... or when sexuality is imposed on a child" (22:15).

5. The Role of Dance Competitions and Media

• Dance Moms & Cuties: Tudor and Mary criticize reality TV shows like Dance Moms, calling it "a horrible show" and denouncing its abusive environment. Mary says, "[the instructor is] abusive, in my opinion, very trauma[ic]" (19:56).
• Peer & Instructor Influence: Stories are shared of instructors telling children to "dance sexier," and instances equating dance ability with sexual experience, highlighting the dangers of unqualified or harmful role models (29:38).

6. Tools for Parents & Advocacy

• Healthy Dance Directory: Mary introduces the publicly available, free Healthy Dance Directory, a first-ever state-by-state guide to studios committed to healthy dance practices (14:12).
• Educational Resources: Dance Awareness: No Child Exploited offers a free 11-page ebook and other research-based materials to help parents "make informed choices," as well as four-minute educational trailers suitable for starting important conversations (13:00, 25:20).
• Nominating Studios: The directory relies on community nominations. Mary encourages: "Please nominate dance studios that don’t hypersexualize. And please look up our directory so you can find them" (38:22).

7. Concrete Advice for Parents

• Vet Dance Studios: "Check out what kind of dance studio your child is involved with," pay attention to costumes, choreography, and music used for all age groups (10:47).
• Limit Online Sharing: Understand the risks of posting and the persistence of online content.
• Engage & Communicate: Talk with children about what they see, expose them to positive examples, and be prepared for hard conversations about culture and influences.
• Look for Joy & Age-Appropriate Dance: A happy, joyful atmosphere and children looking like children are key indicators of a healthy dance environment.

8. Closing Reflections

• Both speakers reflect on the vital role of parental engagement and community education, emphasizing the importance of "developing your heart, your mind, and your body... enjoying movement as the good medicine that it is" rather than the pressure to compete or mature too early (30:07).
• Mary reiterates their advocacy goals: shelter children from hypersexualization, provide free research, foster respectful dialogue, and draw attention to the connection between hypersexualization and exploitation (33:09).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Tudor Dixon [06:24]: “My husband said, ‘I feel uncomfortable. Like, I feel like I shouldn’t be here.’ And that was a moment where I realized... it should not be a place where, when the girls are dancing in front of the dads, it’s uncomfortable.”
• Mary Bawden [05:44]: “There’s been a cultural shift from healthy, educational children’s dance to harmful, hypersexualized children’s dance in adult costumes, choreography, and music.”
• Mary Bawden [07:42]: “Dance is unregulated. And so anybody can open up a dance studio. You don’t have to have a dance background, you don’t have to have a thing... We don’t even have background checks.”
• Tudor Dixon [12:55]: “If you think your 14-year-old doesn’t know [about sexualized content online], you’re dead wrong.”
• Mary Bawden [19:56]: “Healthy educational dance: children look like children... joy, happiness, age-appropriate costumes. Harmful hypersexualized dance: children look like adults, adult costumes, choreography, makeup, not very happy... a lot of come hither looks, sexualized movement.”
• Tudor Dixon [29:38]: “Because this young woman was being told, dance sexier. And maybe if you lost your virginity, you would dance sexier. I mean, that was shocking to me.”
• Mary Bawden [33:09]: "We exist to shelter and protect children from hypersexualized content... to create free research materials... to engage in respectful conversations... and to communicate the connection between the hypersexualization of children in adult costumes... and the pornography industry."
• Mary Bawden [38:19]: “We are normalizing what is not normal.”

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [06:06] Tudor introduces concern from her personal experience at dance recitals.
• [05:44] Mary explains her background and the cultural changes in dance.
• [07:42] Discussion on the lack of regulation in dance studios.
• [10:47] Mirror neurons and the risk of children imitating older, hypersexualized dancers.
• [12:55] The "thirst trap" conversation: modern realities of kids & social media exposure.
• [14:12] Introducing the Healthy Dance Directory.
• [19:56] Differentiating healthy and harmful dance; Mary’s "look for joy" guideline.
• [22:15] APA’s definition of sexualization and consequences.
• [29:38] Real stories of inappropriate behavior by dance instructors.
• [33:09] Four main educational goals of Dance Awareness.
• [38:19] The importance of resisting the normalization of harmful practices.

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Resources Mentioned

• Dance Awareness: No Child Exploited website
• Free 11-page ebook and educational trailers on healthy vs. harmful dance
• Healthy Dance Directory

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Tone & Final Thoughts

The tone throughout is caring, urgent, and highly practical. Both Tudor Dixon and Mary Bawden speak from personal experience but reinforce their points with research, real stories, and specific, actionable advice for parents. There is no shaming—only empowerment and encouragement for adults to stay informed and actively protect children in dance.

Closing advice: Parents, educators, and community members are encouraged to stay vigilant and advocate for healthier dance environments, so that dance remains the joyful, developmental art it is meant to be.

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Transcript

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[Tutor Dixon]

Hey, you guys are listening to the Tutor Dixon podcast. I'm Tutor Dixon and as you know, if you've been listening, you know I have four daughters, so I've been to plenty of children's dance recitals. And you probably have also been to a dance recital or a competition at some point. But has it ever felt a little off to you? Because I actually have had this experience where we've seen, mostly it's like the middle school and the high school students that are performing a dance that seems, well, not for lack of a better term, over sexualized. And I thought, like, maybe I'm imagining this, but I remember at the time my girls, my. So I was sitting there with my husband and he looked at the, the dances that were being performed on the stage and he goes, I feel uncomfortable. Like, I feel like I shouldn't be here. And that was a moment where dance class had always felt like a place where it was like mom and daughters. And then it's. I realized in that moment it should not be a place where when the girls are dancing in front of the dads, it's uncomfortable. So I thought maybe I was alone in this. But I recently heard about a woman who is kind of fighting that fight of over sexualizing our kids. And I thought it was so important for you to hear. So I want to bring Mary Boden in to join us today. She's not only a dance educator, but she's an outspoken advocate for kids. And she actually has her own foundation called Dance. It's Dance Awareness. No Child exploited. Mary, thank you for joining me.

[Mary Lawton]

I'm so happy to be here.

[Tutor Dixon]

So I, I was reading about what you're doing, and I honestly had this situation where I was like, it's not, it's like a whole different culture. And if you, if you have never been involved in dance but you have children or you have Grandchildren, you need to understand that there is safe dance. Dance to me, is very important. Just for you to get a little history of me. My grandmother was a dancer her whole life. When I was a kid, she would tell us about how her mother took her to nursing homes and had her dance. She danced all the way up until her death. She taught dance when she was in retirement. She taught dance to other women. Dance was a huge part of her life. My sister was a dancer. My sister danced all through college. She did competitive dance all through high school. Dance is critical, I think, for. I think it's a great place for women to come together and learn, Learn a skill, become a team. But it's been kind of over sexualized lately. So tell us how you saw dance changing over time and what we need to look out for as parents.

[Mary Lawton]

Well, first, I want your listeners and viewers to know that I'm a dance educator. I have a master's and a BA High, highly trained in Cicchetti ballet and modern, in my Bachelor of arts degree. So I love dance, and I think that's the important thing. Just like you, dance and movement is good medicine. But there's been a cultural shift from healthy, educational children's dance to harmful, hypersexualized children's dance in adult costumes, choreography, and music. And we've gone from a culture. Culture of innocence to a battlefield of hypersexualized content. And actually, this doesn't come from the dance industry. It really comes from the Internet, media and porn industry who are using dance as a portal to make money and to really exchange the innocence of little people for trauma, actually.

[Tutor Dixon]

And that was something that. That was something that I thought was so important as obviously, we're talking about the Epstein files. We're talking about these girls that were groomed and pulled into this life. And there is a reality out there, you know, for people who are thinking, you know, once you got Epstein and once you get everybody in these files, child predators are gone. That's crazy. Okay. This is a. We are the, I think, the number two nation in the world for child trafficking and over sexual. It leads to that. And so these people are actually finding girls on the Internet that are, in some cases, just innocently being posted by the dance company or their parents.

[Mary Lawton]

That's right.

[Tutor Dixon]

But if they're in this situation where they're doing these moves, it is just a predator's haven.

[Mary Lawton]

It is a predator's haven. And dance is unregulated. And so anybody can open up a dance studio. You don't have to have a dance background, you don't have to have a

[Tutor Dixon]

thing because oftentimes we say like we want to get rid of regulation. And in, in our state, I know everything is so regulated. You can't cut hair if you don't have a license. And you never think about dance because you. We haven't had this kind of issue with dance, but wow, we really should know who's teaching our daughters.

[Mary Lawton]

I, I'm with you on the regulation. I'm not, I'm not a strong proponent that everything has to be regulated. Exc. With children. I do think we need to be really careful who gets to work with children. And just a benchmark of something we need in the dance industry is just a background check. We don't even have that. So we have some work to do. And I'm an educator and I love dance. So I'm not going to tell anybody not to sign their kids up for dance because it's so great. All the research shows that it integrates mind, body and spirit. The brain research shows it's working wonderful. Psychological research shows it's wonderful if and only if it's healthy dance. So I use the terms healthy dance and harmful dance. And I will tell you, all the research goes the other way. When children are exposed to hypersexualized adult content put into adult costumes, choreography and music, the research shows the exact opposite effect takes place. And so we, you really need to make informed choices. That's one of the educational goals of dance is we produce all kinds of research based materials that help adults who love kids, and most of us do, to make informed choices so that they send their children to a dance studio that doesn't hypersexualize the children and friends. Viewers just understand if your child is younger and they're not hypersexualizing her, her age group or his age group if it's a boy. Children watch older children, right? And so pretty soon a child begins to think that that's normal when they see older children hypersexualized. So although I just want to stop

[Tutor Dixon]

you there because to the point of almost like for our girls. Cause we would go to these competitions and then afterward they send you the dvd, you know, so you get the whole competition on dvd. And my girls would sit and rewatch, not their own performance, everybody's performance. So they are watching the older kids, even if they're not in the room with them. Once they go to that competition, that's who they look up to. They adore them.

[Mary Lawton]

And brain research calls that Mirror neurons, we copy what we see. So if we have healthy examples, we copy that and if we have harmful examples, we copy that. So children are very, very vulnerable. So everybody needs to take note of this and make sure that you check out what kind of dance studio your child is involved with. And you know, hypersexualized content takes place here too. By the way, that's my two granddaughters. Because all kids are uploading TikTok videos, taking these dance videos, putting them on all kinds of social media platforms. And as you earlier mentioned, predators see this, they upload this content to porn sites. And sometimes, I'm not going to say every time a child uploads their dance video they're going to be contacted by a predator, but it's happening more and more and more.

[Tutor Dixon]

So if you think it's not happening. I had a major wake up call last night when I was putting my daughter to bed. I have a 14 year old. And we were talking right before bedtime, which I find is like the time when your kids start to tell you everything. They're tired, they want to stay up, they want to tell you everything that happened, right? So my 14 year old says to me, hey, I'm worried about one of my friends because she keeps posting thirst traps on TikTok and I almost fell off the bed. I was like, how? Well how do you even know that wor like what did you just say to me? And I'm like, explain what you mean by that. And here on TikTok you have a 14 year old, which my kids don't have TikTok. But she says, I said how do you know? And she said, well she shows me and says, look at the thirst trap I posted. And I said wait a minute, whoa, whoa, whoa. Are you telling me that she genuinely uses that word? And she said, yeah, mom, do you know what it is? I'm like, why do you know what it is? But you, if you think your 14 year old doesn't know, you're dead wrong.

[Mary Lawton]

Yeah.

[Tutor Dixon]

Yes, exactly.

[Mary Lawton]

The cell phone, they all know all kinds of things and we have to begin to address this. You can't back off. If you love your child, you have to really take note of what's going on in the culture and looking around the culture and you're going to see that porn is the wallpaper of our kids lives. So whether they take dance in the dance studio, performing this stuff or at the outside the dance studio, as their friends share videos, as their friends are asked to do certain dance moves as they go to Movies as they read, magazines as they're on their phones. They're all getting hypersexualized content in adult costumes, choreography and music. And so, friends, as caring adults, we have to stand up for this issue. And that's why I founded danceawareness.com. by the way, we have a free ebook Download. It's only 11 pages. It's free. And it will help a caring adult know what is the new trend in children's dance. How to choose a healthy dance studio. How to.

[Tutor Dixon]

That is what I love. You go to a map. You can actually put your town into the website and find.

[Mary Lawton]

Well, that's the Healthy Dance Directory.

[Tutor Dixon]

So that is great. Yeah, so, because you've already done the research then, so you know that. And. And I found one close to us where I went in and I checked it out and I was like, okay, I want to see. And I found one close to us, which I'm in a small town, so for. So it made me actually, I was like, wow, this is pretty extensive because I'm in a small town in Michigan and I was able to find a dance studio that was in your directory, which I think is amazing. And I say that because I agree. I think music and dance and learning to take care of your body, because a lot of what d is also self care to make sure that you are aware of your body, to make sure you're. And that can be so wonderful. So many good things.

[Mary Lawton]

Yeah, you know, you're exactly right. And you know, I was mentioning the free ebook download, only 11 pages, to help people choose a dance studio, because caring adults are often clueless. But we also have what you just mentioned, the Healthy Dance Directory. It's free. It's the first ever state by state listing of healthy dance studios. It's now gone international. We're getting nominations of healthy dance studios from England and Australia and Canada, all over. And friends, it is free. So if you're looking for a healthy dance studio that doesn't hypersexualize, this will provide a wonderful experience for your child. Look in this free directory. But I also have to encourage people. We are a nonprofit. We don't have a lot of financial resources. What financial resources we do have are put into the website so that we can support dance studios and caring adults who care about this issue. So you can nominate a healthy dance studio yourself. And it's free. So nominate a healthy dance studio. If you're listening to this podcast, our staff will take it from there. They have to agree to our definition of healthy and harmful dance and I'll show that a minute if I can. But after that they're listed. So there's no cost for parents and there's no cost for dance studios. We're just trying to really shine a light on this issue and we want kids in safe environments.

[Tutor Dixon]

Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on the Tudor Dixon Podcast.

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[Mary Lawton]

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[Tutor Dixon]

it's so important. It's something that honestly I had been seeing. And you say this about parents being aware I had been seeing but hadn't really internalized what I was seeing as a. Right. As a student that had been in dance as a kid. We were kind of traditionally went from learning ballet to actually performing ballet. And I see too much of the ballet part being cut out and then it goes to like these, like you said, these sexualized dances that are incorporating ballet, but they're, it's different. It's like the kind of dance you would see a, a new girls group do in on mtv. You know, this is not the kind of dance that I did as a kid and it's not like the fundamentals of dance. And once you got.

[Mary Lawton]

No, it isn't.

[Tutor Dixon]

Yes. So once you get away from that as a parent, you have to kind of go, is this best? You know what? My kids just. This will horrify you. And I don't even want to admit it, but my kids just started watching Dance Moms.

[Mary Lawton]

Yeah, it's such a horrible show.

[Tutor Dixon]

It's terrible. What in the world?

[Mary Lawton]

Yeah, the instructor is abusive, in my opinion, very trauma. And you can see that in one episode if you watch it. And I only watch it because I'm the founder of dance. Just like I watched the movie Cuties a couple years ago. Don't watch that either. It's an awful show and it exploits children and produces trauma in them. Let me just share, if I can, some simplified definitions and research so that your viewers, my new friends, my new besties, can go out and feel more confident. You know, this is a nuanced issue and people get overwhelmed. So I have come up with a simplified definition for healthy and harmful dance that seems to be helpful. We have a more nuanced definition in our materials. It's very good. So you can find that for free on our website. But in healthy educational dance, children look like children right now. That should be a given. But look for children looking like children in age appropriate costumes, choreography and music, usually accompanied by a great amount of smiling happiness, joy. But in harmful hypersexualized stance, children look like adults in adult costumes, choreography and music, usually accompanied by adult hairstyles and makeup. And they're not very happy. You're not going to see the same level of joy. You're going to see a lot of come hither looks, a lot of sexualized movement. And so you can kind of spot the differences between healthy and harmful dance without being an expert because children look like children or children look like adults. So I hope that's helpful to your viewers. And I'll tell you, the American Psychological association defines hypersexualized dance. Can I share that with your viewers? Yeah, absolutely. They say, and this is the apa, they say that a child is sexualized when they're valued only for their sexual appeal or, or behavior, when their physical attractiveness is equated with being sexy, when they're made into an object, or when sexuality is imposed on a child and friends. A child would never come up with the sexualized moves on their own that we're seeing. Researcher Philip Adams calls it corporate pedophilia. Researcher Gail Dines calls it a pornified culture. That's why I mentioned the Internet, media and porn just a little bit ago. We are in a culture where sexuality is the wallpaper of our kids lives. And so we have to take note and we have to speak up and say something. You know, you hear that saying at the airport. You see something, say something. You can do that respectfully. It's because, because nobody has said anything, that this has been normalized, that children are being turned into many adults. And again, the outcome is trauma. It's trauma when we teach women and some little boys, because they're getting sucked into this too, that externals and looking sexy like an adult is what your goal needs to be. The traumatic effects really produce human beings that are a shell of what they need to really grow and develop into. When children take healthy dance, it develops the whole person, mind, body and spirit. So it's, as I said earlier, a wonderful, wonderful tool to help a child grow into what they need to be.

[Tutor Dixon]

Well, there's also the role of the parents, which I think we also maybe haven't focused on enough, how to protect our kids. When we choose activities for them, we're so proud of them. We want to be telling everybody about it. And there's this new term that I had never heard before called sharing. And it means that you're sharing videos of your kids online, you're sharing pictures of your kids online. And, and I've done it at, when the girls were little, I shared pictures of them at their, at their dance recitals. And you know, they were, they did look like children. They had their tutus on. But you, you, you think you're safe because you're on your page. And I think that's something we need to talk about. Not only is it that other people are seeing that but also your kids are seeing that. And now we're hearing that preteens is saying they want to be an influencer. So this can all lead to something that is very negative for your child's self esteem.

[Mary Lawton]

You know, it's really broadened and gone way beyond just posting a picture of your child on Facebook or another social media platform, which initially is very appropriate. But we live in a different age. And I can share with you. In 1983, the New York Times released an article called the Age of Childhood. And in that article they talked about innocence. And they said, and this is way back in 1983, that we'd gone through a shift. We'd gone from an age of protection that is shielding children from adult issues to an age of preparation that is exposing children to adult issues. And you can see if you take that thread of exposing children to adult issues where we are in 2020. So it's something I don't think any parent thought about. And again, part of that is the Internet exposure of this kind of content to children nobody ever dreamed would happen. So in dance awareness, we never point our finger at parents or adults or shame them. A lot of this has just happened so quickly. And so we don't have fingers to point at you and say you're a bad parent or a bad person. What we do have is education for you so you know the differences between healthy and harmful dance. We are affiliated with the national center on Sexual exploitation in Washington, D.C. so our research is outstanding. Again, I want to say, come onto our website and you can use all our free materials. We have a couple of four minutes. It trailers that really do educate in a very short amount of time. They're also good to show to your kids and discuss it. There's nothing in them that you're going to be upset about seeing. Probably they've seen it way before you. Although we really try not to have so much in our trailers that you'd be embarrassed about. So you can use those. We have colleges, universities, high schools, schools, churches using our materials to start the discussion. And you will be surprised. Your kids know a lot more than you do.

[Tutor Dixon]

Yeah, they do. And I do think that shows that are glorified like, like the dance moms show. And if you haven't watched it, the concept is kind of that you have all these moms. They're very focused on their children's dance. They obviously they're what they're following the girls through dance. The instructor is very hard on these girls. And as you listen to it, I Mean one, the moms are like, totally invested also in dance. And one of the episodes that they had on just the other day, the girl, like, I don't. She made a mistake. She goes. And she is hiding behind a curtain crying. Of course, this is also for the cameras, but the kids are watching it thinking, well, this is real life. And the mom. I don't know why you're crying. Your life is not dance. And I think, think. But this is how you're portraying her life. She's on TV for dance. So, yes, she does think her life is dance. And she is a child. I mean, we're talking about kids that are 10 and 12 years old.

[Mary Lawton]

You're right.

[Tutor Dixon]

And you have a story about a young woman who danced from age 12 to 16. And she says she was hypersexualized. And. And I say this because she talked about how when she was 12, she was dancing to Britney Spears Slave for you when she was. It was Pussycat Dolls buttons. And the. The choreography was twerking and wide open legs. And. And the comments from the dance instructor, which I think a lot of these. A lot of our dance schools, they have a main instructor and then they have a younger woman who is teaching other kids. And they are also watching these things. That's why you have to talk to your kids and understand, because it can go to a dark place without.

[Mary Lawton]

It can really go to a dark are.

[Tutor Dixon]

Yeah. Because this young woman was being told, dance sexier. And maybe if you lost your virginity, you would dance sexier. I mean, that was shocking to me. It's shocking and not totally shocking because I know that this can go. This can. It can catch fire so quickly in a group of young women. Almost like, you know, when I was in college, they would say, somebody can get an eating disorder, and then it's kind of like a social contagion. But it's this. I think it's the same with sexualization.

[Mary Lawton]

You're right. It has caught fire all through the country. And although I think some of the competitions are just fine, a lot of them award hypersexualized content. And so if what wins the competition is hypersexualized content, all the dance studios and all the parents want to have hypersexualized content because they all want to win. And so we need to get off this treadmill. That winning is the only thing. It's not the only thing. Developing your heart, your mind and your body, expressing beautiful things, beautiful concepts, and enjoying movement as the good medicine that it is, is where we need to Lead children, there's plenty of time for different young women and men to decide they want to be a professional and compete. But there's a great time, and it's called childhood, where they need to get to have fun and explore movement and be a butterfly and, you know, wear a tutu and be in a June recital and just have a wonderful time at. Get flowers from grandpa and grandma and enjoy and not be tied in to being an adult and competing on an adult level. And again, that competition theme is going younger and younger. And younger children are told they're not good enough at 5 years of age to move in a dance class. Give me a break.

[Tutor Dixon]

No, you're so right. So we actually had this conversation. This is why this is so fascinating to me, having four girls. And they all stayed in dance up until middle school, but it was a similar situation where they felt like it was a place where they got put down rather than a place where they were built up. And that when I. When I read your story, I was like, oh, my gosh, we experienced this. And my daughter just the other day, she said, you know what, Mom? I would have stuck with dance had I not been told every day, if you could dance like your sister, maybe you would be good at this. And I think that is such a terrible way to be treated when you're little. Oh, she was little.

[Mary Lawton]

Yeah. That's an abusive message, actually, right there. That shows me that whoever said that is not a dance educator. So you have to go to school. You have to learn what is called pedagogy. And it's a way to teach the art form that really informs and produces joy in a child. Anybody who is aware and educated would never say that kind of comment to a child. So can I share our educational goals?

[Tutor Dixon]

Yeah, absolutely. Please do.

[Mary Lawton]

We have four of them, just so you all know. And again, I'm going to say that we are a free website, danceawareness.com, but we exist to shelter and to protect children from hypersexualized content and adult costumes, choreography, and music, and to protect the art of dance, because hypersexualized content is not the art of dance. Then we exist to create free research materials to give caring adults, and that includes dance educators and parents and grandpas and grandmas all around the culture the information to know the differences between healthy and harmful dance. And then we exist to engage in respectful conversations with everybody, because this issue is not understood without shaming or polarizing adults so that they can have a chance to reflect and hear about the research and the outcomes and then to make make informed choices. And then we exist to communicate the connection between the hypersexualization of children in adult costumes, choreography and music and the pornography industry because children are being groomed into all kinds of traumatic environments. So we need to speak up and stand up and we are here to help and support dance studios that don't hypersexualize and caring adults who want the very best for the children around them.

[Tutor Dixon]

Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on the Tutor Dixon Podcast.

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[Mary Lawton]

I need to be healthy every day to survive it and go through the next chemo round and the next chemo round. So it's important that work was part of that to keep my mind busy for eight, nine hours. And then I had to go back and face the reality. I had a goal and the goal is to survive.

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[Tutor Dixon]

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[Mary Lawton]

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[Tutor Dixon]

You know, I love this story and I say this again because dance was such an important part of my grandmother's life and she passed it on to my sister and my sister was such a phenomenal dancer. And, and I remember that clip, I'm sure you've seen it of the woman who had dementia and they played Swan Lake for her.

[Mary Lawton]

Yeah.

[Tutor Dixon]

Been a ballerina. And she can see. Yes. She look lights up and she immediately starts doing the, the moves to the, to the song and to the ballet. It's just beautiful. And it should be, it should be a safe place. And that's why when I, when I heard your story, I was like, I want to bring this to people because I think we are so used to not rocking the boat the normal place.

[Mary Lawton]

We are normalizing what is not normal.

[Tutor Dixon]

Yes, absolutely.

[Mary Lawton]

And two, can I can I encourage to tell your sister about dance awareness and have her nominate some healthy dance studios. If she's still in dance, she knows them so they can be in our Healthy Dance directory. And all that happens is people know about healthy dance studios. So to all the listeners out there, please nominate dance studios that don't hyper sexualize. And please look up our directory so that, that you can find them.

[Tutor Dixon]

So it's a both and yes, absolutely, I will do that. And, and I know our audience will do that too. Thank you so much for sharing about this today. It's so important and it's so, it's so wonderful for our girls future and our boys future and their confidence and their confidence in learning about themselves. So, Mary Lawton, thank you for coming on today.

[Mary Lawton]

All right, I'm happy to do it.

[Tutor Dixon]

Absolutely. And thank you all for joining me us on the Tutor Dixon podcast. As always, you can find us wherever you get Your podcast, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Rumble or YouTube. Just check us out. Make sure you join us. Uterdixon. And right now, go have a blessed day.

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[Mary Lawton]

When I was diagnosed, all I wanted to do was get back to work. I wanted to get back to that

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[Mary Lawton]

I always felt like I had value. I had a place on the team to just be treated with dignity. It means everything.

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[Tutor Dixon]

Learn more and sign the [e-mail] this

[Mary Lawton]

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