5 girly pop albums that helped me escape unwanted boyhood

music is a means to privately connect with ourselves without fear of the outside world: music frees us from what that world teaches us about ourselves

these are the artists who helped squish my sense of gender into something more satisfying and radiant than the dismal void I was assigned: britney spears, christina aguilera, *nsync, hanson, avril lavigne. i don’t think i actually liked limp bizkit or eminem, maybe not even blink-182 like i claimed i did. i think the main reason why i listened to them is that i saw them as models for how to fit in with the guys, since I had little concept for how to do this, and yes… this is quite concerning!

but look, when your parents see you have a penis they often try to turn you into a boy, and unfortunately: most models of masculinity in our society are pretty concerning (my other models came from fundamentalist christianity and a radically patriarchal homophobic group my dad joined called the promise keepers).

but also: think about my social needs! i was trying to become friends with certain boys, not because i wanted to but because I was supposed to!, and these boys…! they didn’t want to hear about the music I liked!: they wanted me to listen to limp bizkit! they wanted me to listen to blink 182! so I listened to enough of that stuff to cuss about chicks and perform the masculine expressions of something like a 12-year-old’s version of cock rock: while really, in the privacy and freedom of my bedroom, my hours floated away in a dreamy and never ending serenade of britney spears, *nsync, and christina aguilera. there’s so much power in music: even then, as a fundamentalist Christian 5th grader terrified of going to hell, my discman gave me a private space to imagine I was a girl. 

“…baby one more time” britney spears

true, the only music my parents seemed truly comfortable with was christian music: my first concert was michael w. smith: but my mom said she had checked it out and britney spears was acceptably christian. britney made it through the censor and i was able to freely contemplate her whole aesthetic, the whole cover of that first album with her legs her skirt her blouse her beautiful hair is so engraved into my mind. i was just constantly uncertain about whether i wanted to have sex with her or emulate her or have her possess me or all of this at once, but I was sure of one thing as I slowly became more obsessed with her: i wanted my hair to look like her hair on that cover

self-titled, christina aguilera

genie. in. a. bottle. that’s what i craved already in sixth grade: a touch that was in sync with my sensuality in an uninhibited form, a sexual experience that recognized my need to be touched all over in the right ways. i wanted someone: a boy, a girl: to come and release my body to pleasure. i listened to that song on repeat all the time: but i think the line “my body’s sayin’ let’s go / and my heart is sayin’ no” definitely carried a radically different meaning for me than for christina when she sang it.

my heart was saying no not because of any mundane hesitancy or ordinary moral barrier, but rather because I believed i would burn in hell if i allowed myself to be. “your body is not your own,” says the bible, your body is a temple to the lord.” but that is the power and pleasure of sexual temptation: when push comes to shove, sexual temptation is powerful enough to overcome the good christian inside us: for a good little christian, sexual temptation, when willingly yielded to, can be a declaration of independence and a means of empowering self-expression. even if we want to be autonomous with our bodies, we might fear of the means: genie in a bottle was so appealing to me because it represented the fantasy of someone tempting me so strongly that i would be able to overcome my fear of hell, even accept going to hell, in order to access the offered pleasure.

plus, genie in a bottle represented shameless sexual expression with no sense that it was god’s business! also though: right now i’m listening to the whole self-titled album and i have to say there’s only one thing that held me back from blasting this music nonstop. i think you already have an idea of what that thing is though.

“no strings attached” *nsync

nsync was a means by which I could quickly connect with the girls in elementary and middle school. i felt mostly fine outwardly expressing my obsession with *nsync: in moderate ways at least and of course i concealed it around the boys demanding I listen to limp bizkit and papa roach and rage against the machine. to them i revealed my love for justin timberlake as a “guilty pleasure” even though the truth was i kind of wanted to have sex with him. but like hanson, *nsync were boys after all! Still, what I kept secret from my boy friends was that *nsync was my favorite band, or at least the one band i allowed to be labeled as my favorite band in my mind. ‘nsync was the band i listened to them more than any other: i knew all their lyrics: instead of doing homework i sometimes spent up to 3 hours absorbed in their music.

i think that obsessive music listening with *nsync had a similar function as my obsessive listening with other music. obsessive listening was a means to be in touch with my true identity: something for which i had no words but which i nevertheless felt. music was one way i could connect with who i was, even if only in private.

sadly, my obsession with *nsync also shows i think how i was holding something back not only externally but internally. i told myself *nsync was my favorite group because they were boys. in truth, if i had been willing to acknowledge my real tastes, i would have said the girlier the better and i would have been proud of that even at school!!!!

“MMMBop” hanson

hanson was a way to explore feminine expression without the kind of outright rebellion against the patriarchy that would have resulted in literal warnings of hellfire from my parents and church (and of course i took these warnings very seriously and believed in them). but with hanson i could more openly express my fandom: they were boys after all!: while still wishing i had their silky long blonde hair, the kind of hair i’d been dreaming about since first grade when I looked around at all the girls and wanted to kiss them if only to have a better concept of them because i saw their hair and clothes and accessors and bodies and i knew: i want all that so badly, i want to move like them and talk like them, i feel like they are the people i should be with. hair like hanson’s seemed an avenue to a deeper means of releasing femininity, one that was still restrained and felt somewhat safe, and for that i was obsessed with hanson: my parents even took my to their concert!!!!

“let go” avril lavigne

i’ve only really just begun to process how listening to avril lavigne in middle school has affected my psyche over the course of my life.

i think some small persistent part of me has always wanted to transform into a compelling knock off of avril lavigne. after i finally got over my fundamentalist christian phase toward the end of high school, i gravitated toward emo girls: i thought about their aesthetic all the time: and when i was with them, i looked at their expressions and manifestations and i desperately wanted to express the same but i just: couldn’t. i was trapped inside my oversized hoodies and khakis and any time i thought about men’s fashion i felt so uninterested and afraid.

it was a yearning to be free from the models within which i was constrained, as well as a genuine aesthetic affinity, that drew me so strongly to the emo girls. i think that yearning for alternative self-expression goes back to my days listening to sk8er boi: fantasizing i was having the kinds of relationship and personal issues she was expressing in her songs, even imagining sometimes i was her up on the stage.

what made avril lavigne so important was that from my sheltered perspective she was truly “alternative.” avril lavigne was my first dose of the “alternative” as a possibility: and “alternative” is just a stand-in for “self-driven.” and even if pop alternative culture seems manufactured, keep in mind this was my seventh grade brain: that little child saw autonomy, not fabrication. that little mind was deeply inspired toward freedom.

i wouldn’t finish that journey toward freedom until i was 36 (as in, this year! lol). i know now that my later unexpressed obsession with girly “emo” styles came not only from how they appealed to me emotionally and in terms of my identity, but also from the fact that the girly emo vibe was the first compelling alternative model i had ever interacted with out in the wild. meeting girls just being themselves, even within a model, was so inspiring. and i think the way i was drawn to these girls goes right back to my obsessions with absorbing the avril lavigne aesthetic into my psyche as a middle schooler (though simultaneously repressing it to the point of serious mental health, academic, and social issues).

anyway, thanks avril! the world out there was hard, but she helped me find an avenue for accessing the true reality inside: listening to sk8er boi, imagining i was someone like her up on the stage, and make-believing i had her hair, her vibe, her body, her issues.

(not the britney of 1999 but rather a picture i found!)

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