The Evils of Clubbing

I’m 23, and as such, according to society, I should be out “having fun” and “enjoying my youth.” In the “old days,” that would mean going to the movie theater, maybe hanging out at the mall, or going to a school athletic function.

But no more. These days what’s apparently in with the youth my age is to take part in an activity called "clubbing." When you go clubbing, you typically go to a nightclub and listen to dance/techno music. Unfortunately, the girls, for the most part, choose to dress in skimpy clothing, basically presenting themselves in a manner which, to me, is immoral and degrading to women. It is beyond me why any self-respecting young woman (these girls are typically as young as 18) would want to portray themselves in such an unflattering manner.

I thought that in order to make a fair judgement about clubbing that I would go to an actual nightclub and see if it was as bad as I thought. It was every bit as bad, and more. In February, I chose a nightclub. This is a club that caters to the 18-24 crowd, which is my age group. Just as I thought, most of the girls were dressed in tight, skimpy outfits, and danced in a very immoral fashion, making themselves look cheap, or as if they were "easy."

Both girls and guys also did what’s called “grinding.” This, simply put, is dancing very close in a sexually provocative manner. Most of the time, this is with someone you don’t even know, and have just met. In essence, you are simulating having sex with someone you met just moments before, and probably don’t even know their name. This basically degrades everyone involved; both the girls and the guys. To me, it seems that it would be a bad thing to get that close to a person and become that physically intimate, knowing that you know nothing about this person, and that although you may exchange phone numbers, you probably will never speak again, and therefore will not date. Yet these people apparently do things that I would only do with a woman who was my wife with people whose names they don’t even know.

This activity may seem harmless by today’s standards, and television is partly to blame with its blatant encouragement of sexual immorality, but it in a small way contributes to the moral decay our society is experiencing. Think about this for a moment: a couple meets on the dance floor, and gets intimate. Then, they decide to have a one night stand, which apparently happens quite frequently on the club scene. Putting aside the risk of disease, suppose that the girl becomes pregnant. The guy decides he wants no part of it, and there is a single mother, or he decides to support his child, but the couple never “hits it off” and never marries. Then, there’s another child raised in a split-parent environment. This probably could have been prevented if the couple’s hormones hadn’t been pushed into overdrive by the immoral conduct encouraged at clubs.

Perhaps that is an extreme example, but when people our age are shown that it’s no big deal to get intimate with someone you just met, it probably should come as no surprise when diseases are on the rise, and single mothers give birth to babies who likely will never know their fathers, or at least will not be raised in a true family environment.

In short, clubbing is just one of the many things wrong with our society. When it becomes uncool to save sexual relations for marriage, and not popular to take your time dating someone, then only trouble can follow. I feel sorry for those people that choose to engage in this type of conduct. They don’t see that the path it takes them on leads only to heartache, and trouble.

(Written in 2001)