I did not grow up in a Puritan household, but it sure as hell wasn't sexy at all. My parents were a generation apart from my friends' parents, and they didn't share the freewheeling coming-of-age during the 60s spirit. (My mother informed me not too long ago, that despite the fact that my father has been dead for 9 years, she hasn't had sex in more than 25. Thanks for the visual, Ma.)
My dad came of age in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and my mother from the mid 50s to the mid 60s. They were very, very, VERY proper and did not discuss sex. AT ALL.
When I was 15, my father, god bless him, took me aside on the back deck one day and gave me the birds and the bees speech. Which consisted of him saying "Look, kid, just don't get pregnant."
(Consequently, I decided to have sex with girls. Heh. Solved THAT problem rather neatly.)
What is a curious child to do in this environment? Well, I did a LOT of reading. But other than that, I turned to music.
I previously discussed that I'd discovered pop music when I was around six, through some teenaged girls Aerosmith records. And from that record, even though I was too young to really get it at the time, I picked up Sweet Emotion (which remains one of my favoritest songs ever), Big Ten Inch Record, and Walk This Way. All of which remained favorites as I grew older and, gee, somehow started to pick up on the not very subtly veiled sexual innuendo.
Yeah, Aerosmith's lyrics are about as subtle as a rhinoceros.
Maybe a rhino wearing a tutu twerking down the street while leading a 145 member marching band.
Anyway, then 1985 happened. I turned 9. I started getting REALLY interested in the whole sex thing, and it was kind of a watershed year for sexy songs on the radio. Which I listened to in my bedroom with headphones that I'd probably stolen from my audiophile father. 1985 gave us Raspberry Beret, retreads of Darling Nikki & She Bop from the previous year, I'm On Fire, Like a Virgin, Sugar Walls, the return of Aerosmith (in a really blah album), and many, MANY others.
(Not incidentally, 1985 also gave us the PMRC, which was founded by Tipper Gore in reaction to the overtly sexual and supposedly violent or occult lyrics that were on the radio at the time. Ruining ALL of my fun. Ok, not really. It just meant that there were now warning labels on albums. Whatever. Not that my parents ever paid attention to such things. My mom tried to stop me from buying albums with warnings, but failed more consistently than not.)
But really, for me, it was all about Prince. He was this amazingly transgressive daemon for me, the personification of all the feelings that I was having about sex and rebellion and unconventional thought/action. He sang about all of the things I couldn't express, as I was busy toeing the line in ballet, or keeping my head down at home so as not to attract unwanted attention from my crazy ass mother, or set off my autistic father.
The most interesting thing about all of this for me, is that as a young girl I didn't identify as the object of Prince's (or whatever other male musician) attentions, but with Prince himself. I was the sexual aggressor, I was the transgressor, I was the one with the power in any relationship. Which I suppose also explains the having sex with girls thing, as mentioned above.
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| Nope. Not suggestive of anything at all... |
My response to Prince's music, and my identification with him, was a result of the lack of power and agency that I was experiencing in every other aspect of my life. And because his sexuality was (and I guess still is, although the whole Jehovah's Witness thing put a crimp in that for a bit) such an integral part of his music, lyrics, stage presence and persona, and I was at exactly the right stage of development to understand what was going on, I think I naturally associated the free expression of sexuality with power. Heh. Wasn't until much later that I realized exactly how true that was.
Sexuality, as expressed by Prince, was delectably filthy, joyous and free. All things that I desperately wanted to have in my life during that time period. I remember hearing his music and simply reveling in his ownership and pure enjoyment of his body and sexuality, as well as the bodies and sexualities of his partners.
Sexuality, as expressed by Prince, was delectably filthy, joyous and free. All things that I desperately wanted to have in my life during that time period. I remember hearing his music and simply reveling in his ownership and pure enjoyment of his body and sexuality, as well as the bodies and sexualities of his partners.
It was... revelatory, to say the least. Especially to a girl who was in ballet class for hours each day. I'm here to tell you that when you're a dancer, particularly in ballet, your body is definitely not your own. You're told what to do with it, how to do it, and when to do it, in infinitesimal detail. And when you're not a prima ballerina (which I decidedly wasn't) there is no "interpretation" allowed. (Escaping ballet for other dance forms, by the way, was also critically important. But that's a post for another day.)
However, in part, my dance training was what really caused me to bond tightly to the attitudes expressed in music. I'd spent so much of my childhood learning to express the emotions in music through my body, that it became perfectly natural for me to use popular music as the vehicle for expressing things I couldn't actually say or do at the time. (I swear, I am NOT actually recounting the plot of the movie Footloose in this post.) When my sexuality started to bloom, music was the perfect response for the things that I was feeling.
For all of these reasons, I'm super glad that my incredibly repressed, repressive parents didn't actually bother to teach me anything about sex. I'm so lucky that I learned about it from rock stars, who even if they weren't as free as their songs would suggest, were at least selling a version of freedom that was mighty attractive to my developing brain.
Before I actually had sex, it sounded like the most freeing thing in the whole entire world, particularly from the male perspective. I mean, of course I now know that this can be completely true, as long as it is done correctly.
This particular mindset, partly given to me and reinforced by popular music and dance, has managed to keep me having some pretty amazing sex through self-consciousness about my body, both about being drastically underweight (see ballet, above), and now, slightly overweight according to the perceptions of popular culture. It's also helped me continue having great sex after experiencing abuse and rape (therapy was, of course, a huge part of that too), as well as a wide variety of other experiences that can traditionally interfere with a woman's expression of her sexuality.
I find myself somewhat amazed that my warped little brain didn't see Prince's expression of sexuality along gendered lines, but rather along human ones. To be able to experience something with another human that took you outside of your self, and self-consciousness, and worries is one of the most beautiful things possible. It has taught me that my body is something that can be used for expression, pleasure and joy, and that other people's bodies can be too (as long as everyone consents).
