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Imagine If Letting Boys Be Boys Meant Letting Them Dance
Connor Smyth helps redefine masculinity
In case you hadn’t heard, Connor Smyth was the joint winner of SAS: Who Dares Wins. Why am I writing about it? Because he’s an Irish dancer.
And I’m not just writing about it because I’m also an Irish dancer (though I’m absolutely nowhere even remotely near his caliber). While I think it’s great that people are learning about how physically and mentally demanding the sport can be, I’m really writing this because of the fact that in an interview with The Mirror he talks about how he’s trying to prove something after a lifetime of being ridiculed for being a male Irish dancer. This is an elite athlete who has toured the world entertaining hundreds of thousands of people, but he doesn’t get the respect he deserves because he’s a male dancer.
I’d like to say I don’t get it. I’d love to feign ignorance and say “c’mon folks, it’s 2021, men can be whatever they want to be” but that’s still not the world we live in. The truth is that for every Connor Smyth we see on TV there are countless boys who quit dancing because of the bullying. You talk to me about Tommy Hilfiger and his designs, and I’ll point you to the obituaries of the teen boys who died by suicide after being harassed daily because they didn’t fit into the mold of what a man…