Pop It or Stop It: The Infamous Twerk Debate

Kay Say Whaaaat: Honestly, I've been over it since the fad started! Our generation ceases to amaze me with the things we choose to invest our time and energy in (twerking being only the tip of the iceberg).  Ask a young adult about new book releases or global current events and they don’t know, but I bet they can lead you to the latest twerk video. Really? Yes, really! A group of academic internet analysts found that in the month of August more people tweeted about twerking than they did about the crisis in Syria or any other current event for that matter. 

Yeah I get it, maybe Syrian issues aren’t your thing and that’s cool but teaching your 2 year old to twerk is? Eh, I guess to each his own. Who knows, maybe Juicy J will sponsor her education one day. *rachet shrug*

        Nevertheless, I think what bothers me the most about the twerking movement is not that it’s become a widespread fad (as we have seen many come and go), but more so how it all came to light. Twerking has recently been coined a Miley Cyrus thing, so where you hear the word “twerk” her name is sure to follow, but did she create twerking? Hell, is she even twerking? Contrary to our younger generation’s belief, whatever it is Miley calls herself doing and the actual dance coined “twerking” are the farthest things from one another. Her VMA’s performance was in my opinion little more than a sick erotic off beat joke, but little twerking really went on.

        So what is twerking and where does it come from?  Though there are debates on where the dance originated (Africa, New Orleans, Miami, the list of possibilities goes on) it was in the 1980's when the dance came about in African American communities and rapidly became popular in party settings and in hip hop music videos.  Thus meaning, your mom had more of a likelihood of creating the dance and was probably better in her day than you may think you are now. However, that’s a topic I’ll leave your family to discuss at the next reunion.  So anywho, for a little more than 30 years women of color have been so called ‘twerk dancing’ but it seems when Disney Channel child star, Hannah Montana (aka Miley Rae Cyrus) decides to rebel against her innocent childhood image by shaking her sweet niblets (Hannah Montana phrase) or what I call having a seizure on stage, all of sudden the dance style gets attention and justification from media outlets, researchers and even the Oxford Dictionary.

Should twerking have been put in the Oxford Dictionary or Urban Dictionary? Could race play a role in the recent popularity of twerking? Is Miley even twerking? Twerking for scholarships? 
Let us know what you think below.  If you are for the twerk movement add hashtag #PopIt to the end of your post & if you are against the so called twerk movement hashtag #StopIt.