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Justify My Love A Life in Rock Star Crushes by Steffie Nelson There comes a moment in every child's life when he or she finds themselves rejecting wholesome fare like Peter, Paul & Mary or the Zoom soundtrack in favor of an artist who delivers a certain je ne sais quoi that will soon be identified as sexiness. For me, that first hormonally driven infatuation was directed toward Shaun Cassidy, the simpering satin-clad brother of the much sexier David. Although I can't really defend my 10-year-old taste, I can attest that music suddenly takes on a much greater meaning when it induces heart palpitations, butterflies, and visions of hand-holding. And once it happens, there's no going back. The entire teenybopper industry is centered around the blossoming libidos of adolescents, for whom actual songs are secondary to nonthreatening good looks, stylish dress, and cool moves. Once puberty kicked in for real, I became more preoccupied with the boys in home room than pop icons in Teen Beat. During my junior high years music was more of a soundtrack by which to daydream, mope, and (hopefully, one day) slow dance. I certainly wasn't listening to Styx and Air Supply because they were sexy. Melodramatic ballads were the perfect backdrop for my never-been-kissed purgatory; in actuality such songs aren't much different than today's "boy band" fare, except there's no cute face to attach to the fantasy. It took the best boy band of all time - of course I mean Duran Duran - to make me turn away from the varsity football players and realize that there was a brave new world out there, one where hairsprayed guys in makeup were the popular kids. MTV was my initiation: Out of "love" for John Taylor I donned his fedora and jazz oxfords, unaware that in such an outfit I was emulating him, not striving to be the woman of his dreams. Maybe it would have been unrealistic to splash paint all over my body or crawl around in jungle makeup like the girls in the videos, but this simple gap in translation illustrates the essence of a teen's zealotry. Sure, John Taylor was gorgeous, but more important he represented a lifestyle that was nearly opposite of my suburban existence. With their synthy beats and fabulous fashions, the members of Duran Duran certainly were not standing around a keg chanting along to "Jack and Diane." After briefly shifting my affections to Nick Rhodes, the gross commodification of Duran Duran took its toll. I didn't appreciate the "other women" who, like myself, cradled copies of Circus magazine and scrawled "I LOVE JOHN TAYLOR" in lipstick on the bathroom mirror in the mall parking garage. I soon found myself drawn to the sleepy-eyed charms of Squeeze's Glenn Tilbrook, whose attractiveness was much more unassuming than John's or Nick's. Again I felt like I was the only one who realized that this was a cute guy, despite the fact that I'd first seen him vamping in an MTV video. The early days of MTV were, in retrospect, incredibly liberated. Videos represented freedom of expression for artists who wouldn't otherwise "fit in." Prince was booed in the early '80s when he opened for the Rolling Stones, wearing black panties and a dog collar. By 1984 and the release of Purple Rain, we teenage girls were oohing and aahing over this little femme-y man in high heels. But did we really want to date Prince? In actuality wouldn't I have run out of the room if he came crawling across my blue shag rug in a black lace blindfold? Did I even know what he meant by "a pocket full of horses - Trojans, some of them used"? I'm pretty sure that I didn't, because that would have, like, totally grossed me out! Click here to read about the songs that got us hot under the collar and poured gasoline on the flames of the sexual revolution. Click here for info on VH1's five-part special From the Waist Down: Men, Women & Music. |
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