Lady Gaga has made more of an impression on pop culture in the last two years than Usher, Justin Bieber or even Snooki. She's not your typical pop queen like Britney Spears or Beyonce but she makes hits. I'm the first to admit I'm a sucker for any song with a catchy beat I can dance too. And I love me some Gaga. She dances but her dances moves are often jerky and extraordinarily simple. Watch her music videos. I have no dance experience and I'm pretty sure I could choreograph a Lady Gaga music video. I will caution that her music videos are not for people with prudish demeanors. She and most of her dancers are scantily clad and there are a LOT of sexual undertones. The one thing she may have in common with her other pop stars is embracing her sexuality. However, her songs are not explicitly sexual but the music videos definitely are. Let's compare shall we:
Rihanna's song S&M is currently sitting at #6 on the Billboard charts. The chorus says "Sex in the air, I don't care, I love the smell of it, Sticks and stones may break my bones, But chains and whips excite me."
Lady Gaga's current hit, Born this Way, the chorus says, "I'm beautiful in my way, 'Cause God makes no mistakes, I'm on the right track baby, I was born this way."
She makes no reference to sex anywhere in the entire song unlike Rihanna's song (which I don't like at all). You can look at the lyrics here. In fact, the song in pretty inspirational by telling you to embrace who you are and love yourself. However, the music video suggests sex. The most obvious being she runs, in typical Gaga fashion, around in her underwear. The second being a scene towards the end of the music video where she is lying amongst a group of dancers (also in their underwear) and they're rolling around in some black oily stuff. I didn't mean to talk so long about the sexuality in her music videos. But I might as well just continue of my tangent.
My point with the whole sex thing was Lady Gaga really embraces something the rest of society seems to shy from. And now that I'm older, I have to appreciate it. Even as a Christian. No one really ever talked about embracing your sexuality when I was younger. Some times I wonder if teaching kids about embracing their own sexuality would help them understand it better and maybe help reduce teen pregnancies, STI's and lots of broken hearts. Because by golly, what we have now isn't working.
I'm going to be honest... Abstinence education doesn't necessarily work. For me it did, I'm still a virgin and plan to be until my wedding night. However, it doesn't work for everyone. Teaching kids what they shouldn't do only makes them want to do it more. I'm going to be perfectly honest... about 90% of the reason I haven't had sex yet is due to my relationship with Jesus. The other 10% is because of learning about birth control and the fact it isn't fool proof. And no one at church told me that. I learned it from public schools. I didn't want to risk having sex and getting pregnant. I don't want to have a child that I can't even provide for.
Even as a 22-year-old woman, there is still a LOT I don't know about sex. Try and make a sex joke around me and there is a 95% chance I won't have a clue what you're talking about. There are a lot of questions I still have and I'm tired of trying to dance around a taboo subject.
Yes, we live in a sexual world but news flash... we always have! People have always had sex and partaken in sexuality immorality.
The problem we have is, as technology changed our world and brought sex more to the forefront, we didn't know how to adapt to that change. We tried desperately to push it under the rug and hope it would stay there. It's not working and we're trying to push it further under the rug. And I think it's making things worse. We need to stop pushing sex away and embrace it. How do you embrace your sexuality? Talk about it openly.
If I want to know what S&M is, don't dismiss the question because that's when I go do my own research and that's where the problem starts. If I'm a kid, how am I supposed to react to sex if there's no one to explain it to me? Make your kids comfortable talking about sex and I bet you that the risks of teen pregnancies, STI's and broken hearts would drop significantly. It's not easy but that's because we've made it that way.
So here's how my opinions translate to my life. I decided to embrace my sexuality. I'm not afraid to talk about it openly. Someday I will have sex and it will be great! Now granted, I can't say much now because I've never had sex but ask me a question and I will give you an answer.
And yes, Zack and I do try to talk about sex openly. There is only one thing you need to know about that: We've made it clear that if we have sex, it won't be until after we're married. Talking about sex with Zack isn't easy, I will admit, but it's made our relationship that much stronger.
I will talk to my kids openly about it. Again, not easy but I don't want them to face the insecurities I faced regarding my sexuality. I don't want them to have to go through life thinking sex is a sin all the time. Because that's what I thought until I turned about 17. So yea, Lady Gaga's sexuality is a little extreme but at least she isn't afraid to talk about it.
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