I love music and musical performance, especially dancing. However, since the pandemic and our continued vulnerability, I haven’t attended any concerts in public spaces. These days, my enjoyment of musical performance comes through a screen. So, this past week, I tuned into the MTV Video Music Awards to watch a variety of performances from popular artists.
I got through about an hour of the show when I decided that I’d had enough with watching young black and brown women exposing their bodies while dancing and singing in overtly sexual ways. I get that this is performance art and self-expression, and I don’t begrudge anyone their right to express themselves in this way. I’m fine if this is how someone chooses to present themselves to the world. I just know I didn’t care for it.
During particular acts, I experienced a myriad of emotions as I watched. I’m probably a little bit prudish, but my primary emotion was disgust. As female after female exposed herself and twerked in front of the camera, each more sexually explicit than the other, I found myself downright bored. I turned off the television and went to bed.
The following day, when I learned that Taylor Swift won nine music video awards, I began to unpack my thoughts and feelings about the performances of the black and brown women I saw on the show. First, I am thankful to live in a country that allows for freedom of expression. Second, I’m happy if these young women find a sense of female empowerment by performing sexually explicit lyrics and dance moves. Third, I had this horrifying thought that these young black and brown women were persuaded that their ticket to fame and monetary success in the music industry was granted only if they performed in this way. Too many were downright nasty and I know I didn’t like it.
I don’t know the truth behind their motivation to expose themselves. I do know that the market and the award decision-makers decided to give the more conservative Taylor Swift a nod that night. It is a form of subtle censorship when powerful people behind the scenes actually decide who wins coveted awards for their art. Personally, I’m for letting the viewer, the reader, and the buyer, decide. For example, I engaged in a personal form of censorship by turning off the television and refusing to watch any longer. I engage in it when I refuse to purchase music with lyrics that I find offensive. I don’t watch performances that disgust me. I can be a prude if I choose to, while not denying others the right to enjoy violent or sexually explicit content. My entire adulthood has been an exercise in personal censorship and I’m thankful to live in a country where I get to decide for myself.
As a parent, I’ve exercised censorship regarding my own children, and I want to preserve that right for others. For example, there was a time when I didn’t allow my kids to watch “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”. They were at an impressionable age, and I later explained to them that I didn’t want to expose them to people constantly insulting each other for laughs as an acceptable way to communicate in our home. I wanted their interactions with one another to be marked with mutual respect and acceptance. I also limited access to content that contained violence, sex, and horror during their formative years. So, as my children were growing up, I didn’t allow violent video games, rap music, or sexually explicit videos in our home. Adult words, adult conversations, and adult books were kept among adults. This is all censorship. In a free society, I’m all for the freedom to censor content to protect my own soul and that of my own children when they are young.
I’m fully in favor or self-censorship; not government censorship. I’m grateful for guides like movie ratings and labeling content as “explicit” to help us consumers know what to expect. It is true that one person’s art is another person’s trash. Some content hurts my soul while other people are completely unscathed by it. And that is okay. We are diverse human beings. I’m not sure why I’m turned off by near-naked women twerking, but I don’t like it, and I don’t have to explain myself. I also hate boxing and MMA matches because I’m repulsed by seeing folks hit each other. I literally become sick to my stomach. But I have a son and daughter who love those matches.
The ability to make these censoring decisions for my own children when they were young was essential to instilling my idea of basic human values within them. It doesn’t mean that they weren’t exposed to content I disapproved of outside our home. I know they were. But making censoring decisions at home empowered, encouraged, and enabled them to question their own values as they grew up in society and were exposed to other content.
It was my own mother who censored my exposure to certain things. As a result, I recall refusing a role in a play at fourteen because the content of the play went against values I adopted from my mother’s early influence. My mother left the choice to me, and I had to ask myself where I stood on the content before moving forward. I credit my mother’s early content censorship for helping shape my values. With that kind of clarity, I had the courage to refuse the role despite peer pressure. I was able to clearly articulate my objection to the content. That particular play was produced without my participation, and I was fine with that.
Essentially, what I’m saying is that the beauty of living in a free society is having the ability to exercise the tools of private censorship for ourselves and our children. We can turn the channel, refuse to purchase, scroll past, opt out, or not read. Living in a free society means everyone has the right to express themselves and consumers have the right to embrace or reject that expression on a personal level or on behalf of their underage children. What we don’t have the right to do is decide for others what they can and cannot see or how they can or cannot express themselves.
Right now, this freedom is being challenged by groups who believe they have the right and moral high ground to censor art, literature, and even history to limit what other people’s children are exposed to. That isn’t freedom. That is a form of religious tyranny that must be fought against at school board meetings, in the courts, and at the ballot box.
I may not like to see young women twerking half-naked, but I will defend their right to express themselves that way. I’ll simply exercise my right to turn the channel.