While the trend following twerking has been building long before the VMAs, thanks to Miley Cyrus’ going-down-in-history (???) performance that no one can seem to stop talking about, it has firmly crossed over to the mainstream, regardless of any outrage or potential racism involved with Miley’s performance.

A quick look at Google Trends clearly indicates people’s growing interest in the booty-popping dance craze:

Now, thanks to Miley’s VMA appearance, twerking will not go away. Clearly, she, for better or worse, represents the dance’s high water mark. Perhaps the best demonstration of this is the fact the term “twerk” has been added to the Oxford English Dictionary. The definition is as follows:

dance to popular music in a sexually provocative manner involving thrusting hip movements and a low, squatting stance:

The “can you use it in a sentence” example is even better:

just wait till they catch their daughters twerking to this song

twerk it girl, work it girl

Your move, Urban Dictionary.

The twerking related content doesn’t stop there either. Just ask ABC News, which posted the following article: Twerking: A Scientific Explanation. While this is just an attempt on ABC’s part to drive traffic to their “Miley Cyrus at the VMAs” videos, the article does not disappoint. It kicks things off in fine style the with the opening sentence:

Twerking is such a complex, technical subject, only a Ph.D. researcher can explain how the body does what it does to make it happen.

And it only gets better from there. An example:

[strength and conditioning coach for Auburn University, Michelle]Olson said the booty dancing move is a good “twerkout” for your butt and thighs. It also works the deep muscles of the hips and the core muscles of the lower back and abdominals. She said it will definitely shape and strengthen all those muscles as well as give them the stamina to do activities important to most people heavily involved in twerking like say, picking up a screaming child off the floor.

See that, stay-at-home moms (and dads)? You’ve been getting your twerk on without even knowing it. It should be noted, ABC News doesn’t stop there, either. Check this gem out for further proof: Pregnant Twerking: Cooler Than Nicki Minaj?. Just think, if that article was just a week older–it was posted on August 15th–ABC could’ve dropped Nicki Minaj from the title and replaced her with Miley.

Who knows how many more pageviews that would have resulted in?

Condescending articles that are screaming for pageviews aside, twerking is also the second most popular trend on Telly.com. Considering how disgusted Mika Brzezinski was by Miley’s gyrations, there’s no telling how she would react to the scores of twerking videos featuring young ladies who appear to be in the same age bracket as Cyrus. Do these non-celebrity types warrant the same kind of scorn? Now that twerking has been officially indoctrinated into mainstream society, how long until the younger social media users move on to another dance trend? Or is twerking really and truly here to stay?

[Lead image courtesy]