“Suck it up!” Abby Lee Miller yells at her dancers time and time again. The young girls at the Abby Lee Miller Dance Company continue dancing through the pain and verbal abuse as tears stream down their faces. Audiences laugh at Miller’s crass and blunt nature, ignoring the fact that there are preteen girls on their screen that have been ridiculed to the point of tears for years. When the “Dance Moms” girls reunited in November to film a special TV episode, fans of the show were filled with nostalgia, thinking back to the days of petty fights, pyramid rankings and solo routines.
However, it is safe to say the girls do not look back on that era of their lives as favorably as their fans do. Audiences should not encourage this kind of behavior on reality TV, toward both teens and adults, as it is extremely harmful to those forced to face abuse simply used for the entertainment of others.
Some of the most popular dancers on the show, including Maddie Ziegler, have spoken out publicly about their resentment regarding the way The Abby Lee Miller Dance Company trained them.
“My dance teacher taught that if you don’t get the trophy, if you don’t get the crown, you are less, which is the worst way to train a kid,” Ziegler said at age 20. “It carries into other life lessons.”
As years went on, more and more of the original six dancers left the Abby Lee Miller Dance Company. Rather than expressing joy for these girls, finally able to escape the toxic environment they grew up in, audiences were disappointed that their favorite cast members had abandoned the show. They fail to remember that these “actors” on their screen are real people with feelings, and they deserve happiness as much as everyone else.
Despite the constant abuse shown on the show, “Dance Moms” averaged around 2.2 million viewers per season. By tuning into the show each week, audiences fed into the abuse, encouraging it to continue and progress to be even worse as the seasons went on. The goal of reality TV is to make money, so producers will often manufacture scenes that they know will bring in viewership. These are often the ones with the most drama, whether it be a fight between moms or one of the girls bursting into tears.
This is done on countless of the most popular reality TV shows. Beloved shows in the “The Real Housewives” franchise have come under fire for scripting some of their most dramatic scenes. When directors manufacture scenes that they believe will draw viewers in, it not only takes away from the show’s integrity but also has the potential to emotionally harm the stars of the show by forcing them to pretend to be someone they’re not.
As audience members, we need to be more critical of the reality TV we watch. While TV stars may seem as fake as any fictitious character from the comfort of our couches, there are real people behind these screens. The happiness and well-being of others should not have to be sacrificed in order to keep audiences entertained. In fact, audiences should avoid watching shows and feeding into false realities that are not harming cast members. Instead, remember that the people on the screen deserve respect, just as everyone else.
