I swear!

Looking at my last two posts I feel the need to let you all know, I am not actually the dad from Footloose!

Dear Rihanna*: child, child, child!

Do you remember that interview you gave after leaving Chris Brown? How you talked about realizing you are a role model to young girls out there? And how staying in an abusive relationship is never worth it? No? You were wearing all off-white....now you remember! That interview.

So, what I am wondering is this: are you no longer a role model? Or do you just not recognize that (according to your latest song) sucking the dick of a guy who does not know your name just because he would rather do that than sit in traffic is also part of a pattern of unhealthy, self-destructive decision making?

Where is your mother, child? Because you need some serious muth-er-ing!! And since everyone around you seems more interested in making money off of you than in YOUR welfare or the health and welfare of the kids who listen to your music I will do some pro bono mothering right now.

Drugs. Alcohol abuse. Early sexual activity. Hyper-sexuality. Relationship abuse. ALL THAT SHIT is related to low self esteem and self-loathing. The wack-a-do hair and the outfits and the strutting around--its a mask. And no one tells you not to because you are lining their pockets. In fact, I'd bet they encourage it.

When the girls who listen to your songs and behave that way get pregnant and suffer the downward social and economic spiral that is teen motherhood...no one is going to help them out. News flash!! Getting a boy to have sex with you is not power! It's about the easiest thing in the world. The 55 year old, scarred up, disease ridden hooker still makes some money, honey.

And what about the boys (who think a man should behave the way the pigs in your songs do) who end up with children they cannot even begin to care for or support? And what about those children, who are born into circumstances they statistically have almost no chance of changing and every chance of repeating...what about them?

Here's what you are going to do. You are going to walk your ass down to an urban grade school and volunteer. You are going to sit in a classroom with children who are not regularly bathed, fed, or put to bed because their parent is beyond overwhelmed. You are going to help those kids learn to read. You are going to do math and sing songs and play games. And you are going to fall for them. I swear it is true. Those kids will amaze you every day.

Then one day you will go to a pre-production meeting for your next album, review lyrics and song choices, and realize that the machine whirling around your career is chewing those kids up and spitting them out. And when you learn to give a shit about their lives and their welfare and their futures, maybe you'll have your epiphany.

Until then use this as your litmus test: "Would I walk into a classroom of 10 year olds and be ok reading these lyrics to them? Would I explain the innuendo to first graders and be proud to teach them something new? Can I walk out of that middle school, picture them emulating these behaviors, and feel good about what I have accomplished?"

No? Then you are singing the wrong song, sweetheart. You can carry the tune, no doubt. But you have not even begun to carry the load.

*Feel free to substitute Katy Perry, Ke$ha, or any of the other famous, young girls who have no understanding of the impact their media has on children and teens.

Can't wait to hear how this comes out in their therapy session 20 years from now.

Moose and I took the kids to an open studio arts event this weekend at a former industrial site that now houses artists' studios. There were the expected hacks and the unexpected true masters available to show their work.

Going into it, I expected there would be nudes. I was all geared up to let the kids experience this. I talked to them ahead of time about how there are many ways to show and view the human form and sexualizing it is only one of them. How if we are only shown that one way through commercials and movies and the internet then we are limited. When we only learn to view bodies this way it leads to objectification.

The only problem was....

No one had this conversation with the artists. Not to say there was NO range at all. Some of them threw a little violence in there as well.

Which left my preemptive parenting looking less like offense and more like, well, offensive.