A big “thank you” to actress Katherine Heigl for speaking out against Lifetime’s Dance Moms reality show. It’s about time someone did! While angry, verbally abusive dance teachers like Abby Lee Miller do exist in this world, so do vomiting and diarrhea.

According to www.usmagazine.com, Heigl blasted Dance Moms in her weekly iVillage blog post, saying this: “I watched with open-mouthed amazement as girls as young as seven were encouraged to dress provocatively and shimmy around a stage doing a dance performance that could just as easily been a burlesque routine.”

Heigl said after watching the show, she thought the way instructor Abby Lee Miller talks to the girls is “demeaning, belittling, and downright unkind.”

Personally, I cannot believe any network would air this kind of abuse. The fact that they do is in itself condoning a warped culture which can be extremely damaging to vulnerable and impressionable children. What this show says about our culture is very telling: We can watch others be abused, and not do anything about it. The girls’ mothers certainly don’t.

The world of dance is hard and competitive, and often unkind. I know because my daughter is a dancer. But that doesn’t excuse teachers from not trying to do it right. No child should be demeaned in the process of learning to do something correctly – whether it is reading, playing baseball, or doing a dance routine.

Maybe the next big reality show will let us watch husbands emotionally abusing their wives. Think about it. How different would it be?

But then, meeting young dancers’ needs with thoughtful, caring, and intelligent teaching doesn’t sell advertising, does it?  FFG