{"id":1721,"date":"2016-04-26T09:26:13","date_gmt":"2016-04-26T13:26:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/?p=1721"},"modified":"2016-04-26T09:27:51","modified_gmt":"2016-04-26T13:27:51","slug":"regarding-prince","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/?p=1721","title":{"rendered":"Regarding Prince"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of my favorite Durham memories is of the 2011 Prince vs. Michael Jackson dance party on 9<\/span>th<\/span> Street. \u00a0People who had danced to their music as adults in the 1980s were dancing with strangers who were born in the 1980s. \u00a0It was a spectacle of sheer, shared joy. \u00a0We \u201cwent crazy,\u201d forgetting for an evening ways that Durhamites are divided from and taught to fear one another.<\/span><\/p>\n

I was 16 when <\/span>Purple Rain<\/span><\/i> came to the theater in San Angelo, Texas. \u00a0I am pretty sure I went to see it with a close friend from church and her sister. \u00a0It was cheesy in just the right way, and Prince was the most beautiful person I had ever seen on the big screen. \u00a0I had a crush on Han Solo when I was little, and I loved David Lee Roth\u2019s devil-may-care ways on MTV. \u00a0But Prince was a different universe of sexy. \u00a0He conveyed in his music an unselfconscious joy-in-common that suggested to my 16-year-old virgin self an inkling of what sexual intimacy should optimally be. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A twitter friend reminded me this week that Tipper Gore and her team of schoolmarmy scolds were clutching their pearls over Prince\u2019s song \u201cDarling Nikki.\u201d \u00a0In her book about how dangerously menacing our \u201cX Rated Society\u201d is, Tipper Gore tells a story about buying <\/span>Purple Rain<\/span><\/i> for her 11 year old daughter and coming across \u201cNikki.\u201d \u00a0She writes, \u201cAt first I was stunned \u2013 then I got mad!\u201d \u00a0In case you have never heard the song, it is as if you mixed Sesame Street with Tim Curry with Donna Summer\u2019s \u201cI Feel Love.\u201d \u00a0If you have never heard Donna Summer\u2019s \u201cI Feel Love,\u201d rectify that soon. \u00a0Anyway, \u201cNikki\u201d was the first time I had heard a song about a woman masturbating. \u00a0\u201cShe Bop\u201d by Cyndi Lauper had totally gone over my head. \u00a0I had no idea what Cyndi was singing about until after college, when a British friend explained what \u201cbop\u201d meant. <\/span><\/p>\n

Our radio station in San Angelo played Michael Jackson every hour in the late 80’s. \u00a0Prince was more risky. \u00a0And I sure as heck did not hear \u201cDarling Nikki\u201d on the radio. \u00a0There were other provocative songs on the radio. \u00a0\u00a0Even a decade after it came out, Billy Joel was still singing to a Catholic school girl that \u201conly the good die [have sex] young\u201d and Def Leppard was regularly heard screaming \u201cPour Some Sugar on Me.\u201d But neither of those songs are sexually appealing. \u00a0Billy Joel did not come across as an attentive lover who would take actual time with Virginia, once she finally agreed to \u201ccome out\u201d and \u201cnot make [him] wait.\u201d And Def Leppard\u2019s demand for sugar was just plain rude. \u00a0If you really want some sugar, Mr. Leppard, you do not scream at someone to pour it on you. \u00a0Gawd, the stupid lyrics to that overplayed song \u2013 that, dear Tipper and friends, is a reason to get mad. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Prince sang like he genuinely liked and knew particular women. \u00a0He seemed to have friends who were women, which turns out to have been true. \u00a0I will attach some links below on this point. \u00a0But as for my 16 year old self, I remember thinking that it was super-duper-transformative-radical for a man playfully, sweetly to refer to a woman\u2019s own pleasure in this way. \u00a0This is also in his song \u201cLet\u2019s Go Crazy,\u201d when he calls his sweetie and she drops the phone, panting. \u00a0I suppose you can read that song multiple ways, but I always thought it was his Darling Nikki, happily at it again.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here is my preachy, take-away point. \u00a0If you want to ask teenagers or young adults to gauge just how much things have changed regarding how men and boys are judged differently than women and girls regarding sexual desire, ask them whether or not they were taught that it was normal for adolescent girls to masturbate. \u00a0As Keanu Reeves memorably states in the movie <\/span>Parenthood<\/span><\/i>, when Dianne Wiest is worried that her tween son is masturbating: \u201cThat\u2019s just what little dudes do.\u201d \u00a0It would have been a very different (and even better) movie if the story line had led to Keanu Reeves saying, \u201cThat\u2019s just what little chicks do.\u201d \u00a0In that beautifully possible world, maybe even Tipper Gore could have seen the occasion of Prince\u2019s song to have a conversation with her 11 year old daughter. \u00a0Maybe she could have explained to her daughter that it would be ok, if, by any chance, her daughter found the song more intriguing than scary. \u00a0After all, if you are going to grow up to love someone intimately, which at least some of us are called toward, then it is helpful to have some idea what you love about yourself. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The author and your blog editor would also like to bring this piece<\/a> to your attention, which considered – among other things – the apocalyptic valences of Prince’s work.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my favorite Durham memories is of the 2011 Prince vs. Michael Jackson dance party on 9th Street. \u00a0People who had danced to their music as adults in the 1980s were dancing with strangers who were born in the 1980s. \u00a0It was a spectacle of sheer, shared joy. \u00a0We \u201cwent crazy,\u201d forgetting for an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1722,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[70,200,201],"class_list":["post-1721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church","tag-parenting","tag-prince","tag-women"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/prince-music-21apr16.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7EotM-rL","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1721"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1725,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1721\/revisions\/1725"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}