So. SO. I am a dork and a geek, and am one of those adults for whom much of popular culture--especially where music is concerned--disappeared once parenthood came along. The Boy was born at the tail end of 1996, and pretty much the last "new" band I remember really liking was Ben Folds Five.
A few things permeated my oblivion: Eminem and his Slim Shady would often stick in my head. I saw Outkast on SNL and fell in love with them. I have a bit of a thing for the Black Eyed Peas. For the most part, though, I've spent the last twelve-plus years bringing up The Boy on a steady diet of public radio and the music I loved from birth to about age 26, like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, Johnny Cash and Buffalo Springfield, Barenaked Ladies and Counting Crows, Nirvana and Hole. He had a brief foray into bands like AC/DC when he played guitar, but for the most part he just coasted along with whatever I offered, expressing dislike for anything too slow or lovey, but that's about it.
The time has come, though, for The Boy to want to listen to the songs the other kids are listening to, so we've been watching some videos on YouTube and listening to the pop music station in the car sometimes . . . which means that for the first time in my life . . . I am looking at pop music from The Other Side--The Grown-up Side. I've found the Peas, of course, whose Boom Boom Pow song pleases and amuses me ("I'm so 3008; your so 2000 and late,"), Britney's Circus, which is fine, and Lady Gaga. That's her lyric from the title up there, from her song Love Game. Here's the link to the video, if you care to have a look. (I really dig her silver nail polish, but am fully aware of the fact that I am much, much too old for it.)
Anyway . . . yeah. Things are pretty sexed up, aren't they? I laughed out loud the first time I heard Lady Gaga mention her interest in riding some fella's disco stick, and I asked The Boy whether he had any thoughts as to what said line might be referring to. He said, "I think she means penis," and I said, "I think you're right." We talked a little bit about how it seems that sex is pretty much inescapable in pop music and popular culture in general, and how that just seems insane to him, even if he likes the way the songs sound. And then, THEN . . . we heard Right Round, the Flo Rida song that I GUESS is a cover of the Dead or Alive song from the 80s. Do you know this song? Unabashedly about oral sex? Call me crazy, but I wanted to make sure The Boy would know what he was saying if he found himself walking along, singing, "You spin my head round, baby, right round, when you go down, when you go down down." Here's a transcript of that bit of the conversation:
Me: You know this song is about oral sex, right?
The Boy: "What?!?
M: Going down is a euphemism for oral sex.
TB: What's oral sex?
M: [Without even a pause, as if I'm totally cool with what I'm about to say to
MY PRECIOUS BABY BOY.] When you use your mouth to stimulate someone's
genitals during sex.
TB: [Long pause.] OH MY GOD, YUCK!!!
M: Yeah, I thought it was gross too, when I first heard about it, but it turns
out that it's actually a nice thing when you're ready for it.
TB: [Total disbelief; turns up volume on music, ending discussion.]
And so ends a tender parental interlude, wherein I try to play it cool while wildly following my gut and hoping I'm doing the right thing. I mean, sex is a good thing. Knowledge is power. Right? What's weird is that I had no problem at all discussing "the birds and the bees" with The Boy; why should oral sex be any different? What's my problem?
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3 comments:
except, um, the lyrics are actually: "You spin me right round, baby
right round like a record, baby
Right round round round
You spin me right round, baby
Right round like a record, baby
Right round round round"
nothing about heads or going down. ever. i looked it up : )
altho this bit is somewhat disturbing: "Open up your lovin' arms
Watch out, here I come"
but nice parenting. : )
What's my problem?Um. You're as brainwashed by society's hang-ups and obsessions as the rest of us??
I mean, I KNOW, intellectually, that, for instance, that sexism is bad and you shouldn't treat people differently because of their gender and all that. I KNOW THIS. I _believe_ this. And yet I still catch myself acting slightly differently around male and female patrons, because I have been trained by society to respond one way to one gender and one way to the other.
I _suspect_ it's probably the same thing for you. You KNOW that there's no reason to be embarrassed by such a topic, but it's still a little hard to talk about anyways because we've been taught to think so.
And you know what? It's not even a bad thing that you WERE a little embarrassed by the whole thing. You're human; of COURSE you were feeling a little awkward. The point is that you plowed on through and talked about it anyways. THAT is what makes all the difference in the world, it really-truly does. My mother and I have discussed this and decided that parents not talking to their kids is really The Ultimate Problem.
And you do talk to yours. So be so very _proud_ of yourself for that.
(... besides, y'know what?? It IS a little awkward, even from a non-brainwashing-society standpoint, to talk about sex with your kids. The problem is that you're probably comparing yourself to yer mum, who, if she was anything like MY mum, had a nurscular view of sex and so could talk about all that stuff without batting an eyelid. Us non-nursing English majors can't HOPE to compete with _that_. XD)
Tell The Boy I'm as mystified by all the sex in pop culture as he is. It's not a new thing by any stretch of the imagination (I know some sea shanties from way back that makes the Oral Sex Song sound like Sesame Street), but I still don't GET it. For Gawd's sake, who CARES???
It's a weird, mad, fascinating world, it is. XD
Well, since my kids fall immediately on either side of your boy, age-wise, I will tell you that the problem for ME in talking about this stuff is that I don't know how much they already know. They act like they know A LOT, but I suspect that much like when I was that age, a lot of it is misinformation. So how do you know when you're being truly informative and providing CORRECT info on something they already kind of know about, and when you're giving them TOO much information and blowing their still somewhat innocent little minds?
ARGH. I am inclined to just buy them books like my parents did with my brother and me!
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