Joie Chavis and Bow Wow’s daughter Shai Moss, 10, prompted an age-appropriate debate on social media on June 12 after fans saw her participating in the “Into the Thick of It” TikTok challenge.
This challenge became viral earlier this year after a remixed version of The Backyardigans’ 2005 song “Into the Thick of It” was added to the app. The track’s origin came from an episode of the Nickelodeon hit series where five animal neighbors named Pablo, Tyrone, Uniqua, Austin, and Tasha wandered into the jungle.
Although there are no standard dance moves, The 10-year-old was seen jamming along to the song alongside an unidentified friend. The recording began to turn left after Moss started to shimmy to the beat and continued that particular move throughout the entirety of the video. After the video started circulating on social media blog sites like Hollywood Unlocked, a few people said those moves weren’t appropriate for her age. At the same time, others defended the 10-year-old and brought up her dancing abilities.
“I just love this kid!!!!! She’s so ‘child-mature’. Like, she does all the dances but in a respectful kiddie way. You can tell she’s being raised right and not trying to grow up too fast!”
“That’s what y’all consider twerking? 🤔 & it disturbed y’all.. 🤔 I literally watched this & said – she got her rhythm from her mom. Y’all do the most and make everything negative.”
“She loves to dance 💃 leave the poor kid alone👏 some of y’all don’t even check on your kids accounts.”
“The twerking no mam.”
“Here we go AGAIN!! Step ups was cute up til she started the twerking. Can we normalized little girls being little girls!!!”
“She too grown for me 🙄.”
Moss and her mother, dancer Joie Chavis recently received some flak from their followers for Moss’ “grown” personality after the mother of two uploaded a video of them dancing to “Touch Down To Cause Hell” by HD4President. The May 24 clip captioned “When a mom and daughter dance turns into the daughter doing too much,p” displays the mother-daughter duo executing the challenge perfectly, which included them turning around when the beat drops while shaking their derrières.
The controversy behind the recording occurred when Moss decided to add her spin to the dance by waving her left arm in the air and shaking her hips. As soon as that action occurred, Chavis quickly scooted the 10-year-old off camera.