Monday, January 20, 2014

About Listening to "My Music" in the Car

I have reversed my earlier opinion about children listening to "my music" in the car.


I love music. I listen to it every day. And lyrics, like poetry or any other type of art, are all about emotional impact. But the lyrics accompanying what is sometimes great music are getting sexier, more hostile and frankly some of them are bordering on rape. I have to admit, I love it. But I am also old enough and experienced enough to enjoy sensual, sexual and passionate art for the emotional impact and charge it gives me. It doesn't shape my understanding of love and sex. I am pretty solid on those things.


What really drove me over the edge, was "Do What You Want [with my body]. Lady Gaga, I have loved you since last year when you released "Applause" and I spent months in my car fantasizing about staying up past 10pm and playing guitar in a club. But now I do not love you anymore. Because no one, even me, should ever be emotionally charged by the prospect of someone else using her or him for his a body. Sure, you think you remediate the effects by asserting that "you can't have my heart" and "you can't have my mind" but "do what you want, what you want with my body".


Gaga, may I call you Gaga? Your heart and your mind are part of your body. Whether or not you believe your body was created in the image of G-d, I do. And even if it isn't, the whole thing--your body I mean--is holy and precious and it's everything you have.


In my car, "singing along", is always allowed. But we are not thinking about the lyrics. It just happens. I do not want my children, consciously or subconsciously, to absorb lyrics like Jason Derulo's "I know you're nervous. So just sit back and let me drive" is not appropriate for my children or Pitbull's "Give me everything tonight" "we might not get tomorrow". These lyrics do not describe mutual and consensual sex. And they don't describe what sex really is--a holy and precious bond between people who love each other. Theoretically anyway. It's about a man talking a woman into doing something she is not sure about. This attitude toward sex being a goal you try to win is not something I want for my boys or for my girl.


Robin Thicke? ... this is not even worth  ...

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Related Page:  Moms Who Don't Fit the Profile 

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