CULTURE

A dagger through the heart

Is this dirty dance craze demeaning to women?

Atiera Horne, 17, from the Fenway, was at a Halloween party on a Saturday night in the fall of 2009. Everybody was doing it, including her friend. A young man walked up to her and asked her to dagger. She instantly declined. He kept it moving.

Daggering is a newly popular dance which is a highly sexualized grinding often done front (female) to back (male). It is associated with the musical genre dancehall. Supporters of the dance say daggering is an expression of their Jamaican roots. Critics, however, say it’s demeaning to women.

The dance is so controversial that the Broadcasting Commission of Jamaica banned it from the airways due to its raunchy lyrics and movements. Even in this country it is a source of debate. Dr. Caren Walker Gregory, headmaster of the newly renamed Edward M. Kennedy Academy for Health Careers, says she will be approaching everyone who tries to dagger at prom, and will have a private meeting with senior and junior girls beforehand.

“Now that I’ve educated you on daggering, you can now decide whether or not you will perform this act of dancing at school functions but I will not sit there and let it happen,” Walker Gregory told a school assembly in April.

She explained in an interview: “I want my students to have fun at their prom, but they do not have to dagger to have fun. It’s too sexual and it’s inappropriate.”

The dance has become such a part of young peoples’ culture that you can see many teens daggering at house parties and other social celebrations. Those who dagger say it’s simply a part of life.

“Daggering is not a classy dance, but it’s still dancing,” says Carolyn Jennings, a senior at Kennedy Academy. “I don’t consider daggering [simulated sex] because it’s to a beat.”

Many teen boys feel daggering is a natural impulse. “Yes, I love daggering. It’s like sex to me, it’s my hobby,” says Kerry, 18.

“I feel like a king when I’m daggering. I just pick up all these girls,” says Dayo, 16.

“Girls who dagger -- they already know they’re objects, they know what it is,” says David, 17.

While all three Boston teens were bold in their defense of daggering, none wanted to be identified by their last names for fear of being ridiculed by their teachers at the John D. O’Bryant School of Math & Science.

When the music stops, and the party’s over, and everyone goes home, some adults fear that daggering can lead to other things, like injuries and full-on sex.

“It is an arousing dance as well as an attraction between two people, which causes the hormones to react,” says Brian Means, a junior at Boston Arts Academy, who daggers.

This is exactly what Walker Gregory has strong concerns about. “Daggering demonstrates low self-esteem and can lead to sexual activity,” she says. “They…can then end up pregnant.”

Horne doesn’t just see daggering as a dance; she thinks it’s on a whole different level. “I think girls who dagger are having sex or have had sex, because they do not mind it,” she says.

Teens are daggering everywhere, whether it is a cultural thing or not. Still, Walker Gregory has a surefire test for whether teens should be doing it or not. “If you think it’s inappropriate for your parents to see,” she says, “then it’s inappropriate.”

Supporters of the dance say daggering is an expression of their Jamaican roots. Critics, however, say it's demeaning to women.