The response to my post last week has been phenomenal. It reminded me once again of the power we harness when we make ourselves vulnerable and tell our stories. A friend posted a link to my post on Facebook and, in the comments, Robin Plemmons posted this video. Just when I thought I had no more tears left in me, this proved me wrong.
This makes me happy.
http://youtu.be/hlVBg7_08n0
I am a procrastinator. In fact, I've often described myself as the Evel Knievel of Procrastinators. The biggest challenge to a procrastinator is to find something to do with all the time you are wasting before completing the next item on your "to do" list. Of course, this is why the internet exists and You Tube is one of the greatest way to procrastinate.
Here are some of the You Tube wormholes I have gone down while wasting time:
1. Old commercials: A random commercial from my childhood will pop into my mind and I will then spend vast amounts of time watching every version of it. Long live the Monchichi!
2. Classic country performances: I start thinking about my parents and then, next thing you know, I am watching old Tammy Wynette videos and Tammy Wynette is the gateway to Loretta Lynn (who really was the Queen of Country?) and then I'm watching George Jones videos and then Patsy Cline and then back to Tammy Wynette.
3. Iconic scenes from movies: Don't you sometimes just want to see the Brat Pack dance in The Breakfast Club? Maybe you need to see Patrick Swayze say "Nobody puts Baby in a corner." Maybe you want to see Hubbell break Katie's heart all over again at the end of The Way We Were. Okay...that last one is probably just my thing.
4. Today...I needed to see the scene from The Pirate Movie with Kristy McNichol and Christopher Atkins that my friends and I reenacted all the time in high school. And you know what? You Tube delivered.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Czte2iTaxM&feature=related
Now you've had a peek inside my brain!
Growing up, the men in my family came and went but the women were constant. My mother. My sister. My aunts. They were my role models and by watching them I learned how powerful women can be. They worked hard, loved hard and fought hard. They taught me that women could do anything but I never heard the word "feminist" until I went to college.
My lefty liberal arts college gave me the language to explain every lesson I'd learned from the women in my family but this intellectual feminism pushed me to question everything - my appearance, my relationships and my language. In some ways, becoming an intellectual feminist made me rigid and guarded. When you sit down with your girlfriend to have a serious conversation about whether or not buying a dildo will make you a bad lesbian feminist, you've gone too far.
So, how does that kind of feminist suddenly become enamored with rap in her 40's? This is a question I've been wrestling with for months as I have listened to Nicki Minaj, Eve, M.I.A., Jay Z, Kanye and yes - even Eminem. How do I reconcile my politics with music that can be, at times, so filled with misogyny?
I finally have the answer - I can't.
Music has always been important to me. It is pure emotion. It is cathartic. It inspires. Rap is no different. It is all about confidence and power. Rap dares you to claim your worth and dares everyone else to doubt it. In the past year, I've pushed myself to do things that I had been afraid to do and rap has been my soundtrack, the beat helping to keep my self-doubt at bay. Also - rap lyrics are hilarious and clever and I am always a sucker for that combination.
My mother worked as a typesetter at a printing company. The company was owned by a married couple but my mother was the only woman who worked with the press operators who were all men. She would occasionally mention that it was hard to hold her own as the only woman. She never complained but simply said, "Sometimes, you have to be a bitch." When she retired, the woman who owned the company gave her a necklace that said, "Bitch" and told her, "Bitches have to stick together."
Nicki Minaj would say that my mother was a "bad bitch doin' it". I can live with that. I aspire to be the same.
