Richard E Rich Academy Guidance Counselor Anna Alerina was grilled by parents at the Horrible Parent Tea last week for comments she made on her entirely private Facebook page about how “ballet is creepy.” The comments were shared on the Mean Ballet Moms Facebook page via a predatory screenshot.
“Ballet is a public health hazard,” the Guidance Counselor told the moms over the Chai Lattes that have long replaced the traditional over-brewed Lipton tea bags at the monthly parent event. In an attempt to avoid being fired over the controversy, Anna Alerina broke with the tradition of genteel leisure that characterizes Parent Teas to present a PowerPoint on the evils of ballet.
Slides provided evidence that ballet gives girls eating disorders, disrupts menstrual cycles, leads to serious injuries, and causes chronic pain. Ballet is rife with pedophiles and sexual abusers. Females age out early and almost never enter the leadership ranks of choreographers and directors.
The angry ballet moms could be heard groaning with annoyance during the presentation and tapping their en pointe toes. They were particularly irritated by the photos. The presentation included gory pictures of bloody feet mangled by ballet, horrifying X-rays of skeletal dance injuries, and scary images of ballerinas dying of anorexia in grim hospital wards with bad lighting.
The negative feedback caused Anna Alerina to pause her presentation.
“Those are all facts,” the Lead Mom said. “We are not disputing the facts. Most of us were Ballet Girls.”
“I still barf after every meal,” her sidekick added, smoothing her Lululemon leggings.
“Everyone knows ballet is creepy,” agreed another mom. “I was raped by my ballet director when I was fourteen.”
Several moms nodded and the other moms shrugged.
Hoping to capitalize on a moment of honesty, Anna Alerina clicked to the last slide comparing ballet to Chinese foot binding and castrating boy “castrato” opera singers.
“So true,” agreed another mom, “but what bothers us is that you said this on Facebook where our daughters could see it.”
“Imagine how upsetting it is for our daughters to hear this from the Guidance Counselor!” agreed a mom, putting down her latte in exasperation. “You are supposed to protect them from this stuff.”
“It is about gender equality,” volunteered the sole dad. “Everyone knows boys get brain injuries and whatever from football, but we are not taking football away from our boys.”
“Yeah, it is really toxic the way girls are over-protected. Such a double standard. When will our daughters get an equal opportunity?”
“This is just not appropriate for young girls to hear,” another woman suggested to murmurs of approval. “It is really gross to be talking about all this sexual stuff when we are dealing with underage girls. I think it might even violate Facebook policy.”
The comments continued:
“All this negativity distracts them from building skills and being competitive.”
“You are creating a really negative environment for the female students and there are all these studies that show that this kind of thinking really holds girls back.”
“Our girls are going to turn into snowflakes if we let a little adversity get in their way.”
The Lead Mom then demanded that the Head of School stand up and speak, at which point the Head asked Anna Alerina to sit down and he took over the meeting.
The next day the Head of School announced that he would be placing the Guidance Counselor on leave until the Board could get a look at her private Facebook page and examine the issue.
On his private Facebook page, the Head posted that Anna Alerina continued to send her own daughters to the same Very Vigorous Pre-Professional Ballet School as the other moms and attached a photo of a rehearsal tagging the girls.
He commented that the Angry Moms were just jealous that the Guidance Counselor’s daughter got the lead Nutcracker role as Clara for the second year in a row, and predicted the trouble would die down once the Lead Mom’s daughter got a better role.
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