They circle to a hypnotic beat. They are both conventionally pretty, and not; young, and not; thin, and not at all. There are bad haircuts and dye jobs and muffin tops and, often, a hot-mess sex appeal. Sometimes they are suburban moms, and sometimes they are festive lesbians. (One group calls itself “SubaruShack.”) Occasionally, they’re men. Or Legos. Or ducks.
The common denominator? They don’t care what you think and are having a great time. Almost invariably, we wish we could join them.
I’m talking about the viral TikTok dance (and dancers) of the moment, performed to a clip from Janet Jackson’s “Miss You Much.” They have taken over my FY page, and probably yours.
Thousands of accounts are copycatting this dance, stolen from the Welsh female punk band Panic Shack. Its members range in age from their late 20s to mid-30s, which practically makes them elder statesmen in the punk-rock world.
They are known for their live concerts and funny, raucous anthems of female rage, like “The Ick (You Put Me Off Mate/You Make Me Squirm)” and “Gok Wan.” (Sample lyric: “If my stomach is flat and my arse is perky, maybe I could get everybody to like me.”) Panic Shack’s first album drops on July 18, but thanks to their moves, they’ve already gone viral.
They started doing this dance in May before every live show as a way of hyping themselves up for the performance. Tattooed, unsmiling, and without a hint of liposuction, they circle around each other in a way that is strangely libidinous to women both gay and straight, lifting their arms suggestively at random intervals.
“All it took was one girl raising her arms for me to question my sexuality,” one woman commented. “We had no idea it would be a gay awakening for people, or that anyone would connect so deeply with it,” says guitarist and band member Meg Fretwell.
In fact, the dance did not even originate with Panic Shack. It was created by Jez Shuvani, a choreographer and former belly dancer who has a small teaching studio in Cleveland, Ohio. (Not exactly ground zero for things that go viral on the Internet.) Shuvani had a tiny following on social-media platforms, but when she dropped her first video, which featured grinning zaftig ladies seemingly twirling in a 1970s-era wood-paneled basement, she was startled to get two million views.
When Panic Shack picked the dance and began performing it, those numbers grew exponentially. The way that she thrusts her arms upward? “It’s just this belly-dancing move,” says Shuvani. “It’s not really that profound.”
So how to explain its mass appeal? It probably comes down to this: it makes anyone, of any shape and size, look strangely sexy.
The dance is “very much not for the male gaze,” says one TikTok user, in one of scores of stitches on this topic. “It’s like, you’re in your center, with your bitches, doing something you’re enjoying, which men hate, particularly if you’re showing your pits which are unshaved, or you’re not looking a particular way.” Cue the next woman on my FY page doing the dance: fleshy, swaying seductively, colostomy bag on full display.
These videos can be infuriating to male rage-scrollers. “Cringe” is a common comment. “Why do they all look like feminazi free bleeders?” wrote someone who goes by @doesnt_matter37. The fury seems to be a product of the audacity of female self-acceptance—which, as it turns out, is demonstrably good for one’s mental health.
Just one small example: A 2023 report published in Computers in Human Behavior looked at the impact of TikTok dance videos on young women’s body satisfaction. The researchers found that viewing videos featuring diverse body types increases positive body image, while repeated exposure to content showcasing only thin dancers led to negative self-perception—whatever the actual body type of the viewer.
All great TikTok trends must end, and perhaps this dance will have its jump-the-shark moment soon.
But in the meantime, its popularity shows no signs of abating—perhaps because it’s a moment of unbridled joy, mixed with defiance, during a time of unrelenting nastiness on the Internet (and elsewhere).
What started as a bit of fun, says Panic Shack’s Fretwell, has become “this bonding experience—not just for us as a band, but with this massive online community we didn’t even know was out there waiting for us.”
Judith Newman is a New York–based writer and the author of To Siri with Love
