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ABSTRACT
This article reflects upon my experiences teaching female undergraduates in the online classroom. My students have repeatedly expressed love for sexualized dances performed by women in popular American film and television, including dances from Grease (1978), Dirty Dancing (1987), and CitationShakira's “She Wolf” (2009b). I have been repeatedly shocked and confused by my students' reactions; I view these dances as objectifying women's bodies in an unhealthy way, whereas my students describe them as demonstrating female empowerment. Although I do expect my students' reactions to be different than mine, their passionate exclamations of “I LOVE this dance! It screams empowerment!” starkly contrast with mine: “This dance? You love THIS dance?” Applying a lens of cultural and feminist theory as expressed in articles by Laura CitationMulvey (1975), Richard CitationLeppert (2000), Susan CitationFoster (2008), Gina CitationBarreca (2009), and others, this investigation questions both the views of my students and my responses to them.