One of the things we try to do is keep an ear to the ground for new trends and terms that emerge in relation to sex. Nothing happens for a while and then we hear about two in the space of a couple of days. You probably already know this but…
‘Twerking’ just hit the headlines because Miley Cyrus twerked someone or other in her performance for the MTV Video Music Awards, and thus in front of a large TV audience. And it got a lot of complaints about unwarranted raunchiness, and ‘not in front of the children’ type comments. You can read more about all this at the BBC website. Part of the issue was to do with her wearing a flesh coloured costume that suggested nudity (though apart from the color it’s relatively conservative) but if you want to see the twerk, there’s a 39-second clip on Youtube where the twerk comes at 18 seconds in. It’s basically bending forward and waggling your ass, but for maximum effect a woman stands with her back to a guy and bends forward to grind her ass into his groin.
It doesn’t actually look like a very committed and positive twerk, just a hint of one. But if you really want to know the detail of how it’s done, there are instructional videos including this one on Youtube. We can see the attraction of it – but we’re just left wondering whether, since it’s billed as a ‘club dance move’, many people do it in clubs – and indeed whether if you went to a gay club you’d see guy-on-guy twerks. If anyone knows, we’d be interested to know.
And is the name just random, or is there any proper etymology there?
[Edited to add: on 28 August we discovered that twerking, along with terms such as ‘omnishambles’ and ‘selfie’, has made it into the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary. The term seems to have been around in hip-hop culture for around 20 years though only became visible in the cultural mainstream in the last year – which probably means it’s been a known as a club dance move in your local nightclub for a bit longer than that. More on this from your all-seeing cultural authority, the BBC.]
Now for the slutdrop. This is a twerk (optional) followed by a squat, and if it’s done right – that is, with the woman standing in front of a man and facing away from him, the result is that most of her spine makes contact with his groin. It’s probably been around as a solo dance move for quite a few years (and maybe starting in places like strip clubs?) and there are some Youtube clips now that are a couple of years old. But in the UK it was popularised by a TV programme called ‘Geordie Shore’ . Here’s their explanation/demonstration.
And no, we’re far too staid to do this kind of thing ourselves. Though if anyone want to come over and give us a live demo…
deliciouslydeviant 