Growing up in middle America, a lot of my contemporaries didn't know any gay people until they were adults. (Well, realistically, they almost certainly did know some but, in the 1960s and 70s, people were a lot more careful about who they shared their secrets with.) I'm from New York City, Manhattan specifically, so I was exposed to more diversity in general. My parents were both in the theatre, and I followed in their footsteps for a few years. Suffice it to say, I had a lot of gay friends.
Still, there were shocking moments for even the most enlightened of us. I remember when my preteen idol Elton John came out — I didn't really care that he loved boys; I was just disappointed that he wasn't going to love one particular girl ... me. A few years later, the AIDS epidemic and its celebrity victims cast a spotlight on how many of our heroes were leading double lives. After all, if Father of the Year Mike Brady was a pansy, was anyone really safe?
Times have definitely changed. But, I have to remind myself that I've lived in a fairly rarefied set of circumstances all along. From show business to publishing, advertising and graphic design, and always on the more liberal east coast. By and large, my gay friends have been creative and confident. If they felt misunderstood or victimized at home, they left that behind when they moved to Greenwich Village or the South End. Or so it seemed to me. I'm still caught off guard sometimes when I hear a friend tell me about family members who won't see her anymore or another one getting beat up with his boyfriend on a weekend away.
I have to remind myself that no matter how nice their shoes are, I can't really relate until I've walked in them.
My daughter spent the early years of her childhood with all our friends — never distinguishing between the straight couples and the gay couples. In fact, one of our favorite stories is from 2004, shortly after Massachusetts became the first state to legally recognize gay marriage. She was asked to serve as a junior usher in the seaside wedding of two dear old friends of ours. She was thrilled and the day was absolutely glorious. When her daycare provider saw her again on Monday, she asked "Was the bride beautiful?" Our daughter stopped and thought for a minute, then said, "I don't think there was a bride."
Clearly, we made it a point to instill an open mind in our little daughter. But now, as she heads into her senior year of high school, I'm happy to report that her entire class seems to feel the same way. There are several "out" gay couples, who didn't seem intimidated at all about bringing the date of their choice (and of their sex) to prom.
It's great to see so much less "to do" being made. I don't feel compelled to discuss it with my daughter because she takes it all completely in stride. In fact, she recently educated me on some of the nuances — and vocabulary — that surround the LGBT community. We were in the car (what else is new?) and she mentioned a girl who was in the year ahead of hers.
"She's gender queer," she told me.
Say what?
She tried to explain and I found myself trying to relate it to the definitions I already felt so comfortable with.
"So she's bi?" I asked.
"No."
"So she's asexual?" I asked.
"No."
After a few fruitless minutes, she did what any self-respecting teenager would do. She pulled out her iPhone and quickly found an infograhic to help me understand. 'Turns out it isn't simply "straight," "gay," and "bi." There are actually four different elements of a person's sexuality. These usually work together in a fairly traditional way (a woman who sees herself as feminine, has a female body, and is attracted to men), but — in reality — they can also present discretely from each other. So, with three defined positions for each element, there can be 81 different combinations. And, to make the whole concept a little more complicated (because it isn't complicated enough already, right?), each element is a continuum.
OMG.
My daughter patiently described the diagram to me. The different elements or attributes are:
Gender Identity
This is how you think of yourself, how you interpret who you are — regardless of hardware or sexual desire. (Watch "I Am Cait" on E! or the even better "I Am Jazz" on TLC if you need help understanding this.) You can identify as a Woman, a Man or Genderqueer. (Ah ha!)
Gender Expression
This is how you choose to gift wrap the package that is you. How do you act, behave, dress and groom? You can express yourself as Feminine, Masculine or Androgynous. (Just think of all those glam rock stars we grew up and it'll be more clear.)
Biological Sex
These are the parts you were born with: your organs, hormones and chromosomes themselves. As we used to say at work sometimes, "It is what it is." You were born Female, Male or Intersex.You have no say over this piece of the puzzle. Unless you turn to surgery and hormone therapy.
Sexual Orientation
This is the simplest part of all of this because it's the part most of our society adjusted to a couple of decades ago. What turns you on? You can be Homosexual (same sex arousal), Heterosexual (opposite sex arousal) or Bisexual (either/or is fine by you).
But, as I explained before, there are myriad shades of grey in these characteristics. The possibilities may not be endless, but clearly this isn't a situation of one size fits all. And what impressed me most was how my daughter and many of her cohorts take it all in stride.
I was also struck (and not for the first time) by how the tables have turned. I had my chance to teach my daughter about the world.
Now, she's teaching me.
If you enjoyed this post, I invite you to order a copy of my book Lovin' the Alien at www.lovinthealien.com.
Several times a week, I drive my teenage daughter to and from the stable where we board her horse. At this point, with the permission (and permit) of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, plus several hours of professional instruction under her skinny little belt, she could actually do the driving.
Except she can't. Because I'll have a heart attack. And then where would we be?
I could write an entire post — multiple posts, really — about the sheer and almost illogical terror I'm experiencing when the fruit of my womb is behind the wheel of my car. And, I'm sure I will.
But, not now.
Right now, I want to talk about another rite of teenage passage. Song lyrics, those anthems of angst that define today's adolescents just as they did when you and I were sixteen.
You see, on one of our recent car trips, the oldies station (yes, I'm an oldie, I admit it) was playing The Who. I was singing along without much thought, when I realized how silly I (not to mention Roger Daltrey) sounded:
Don't cry
Don't raise your eye
It's only teenage wasteland
I'm nearly 52. (Holy crap.) Daltrey is nearly 70. (HOLY CRAP.) Meanwhile, the only teenager in the picture was quietly texting in her seat, ignoring her mother, ignoring the ancient rockstar, ignoring all that teen trauma from long, long ago.
I wasn't a huge Who fan (although I did see the Tommy movie a couple, well several, okay about a hundred times). My teen years were all about Elton John:
I'll be a teenage idol, just give me a break
I'm gonna be a teenage idol, no matter how long it takes
You can't imagine what it means to me
I'm gonna grab myself a place in history
A teenage idol, that's what I'm gonna be
And Meatloaf:
Ain't no doubt about it
Baby got to go out and shout it
Ain't no doubt about it
We were doubly blessed
'Cause we were barely seventeen
And we were barely dressed
Of course, my daughter and her friends have their own musician gods and their own anthems of angst. Today's pop music includes countless songs about the trials and tribulations (and torture) of being a teen, about first love, about partying. For example, "Up All Night" by One Direction, "Teenage Dream" by Katy Perry, "We Are Young," by Fun.
Or anything at all by Taylor Swift.
My daughter's musical tastes run more toward small, indie groups. She and her BFFs go to a concert every month or so (long nights of fun for them; long nights, period, for the parents). "Their" bands often open for better known acts. On more than one occasion, they've gotten to meet them, take selfies, snag a broken, autographed drumstick.
Good times.
Every generation has its own soundtrack. And, every decade produces an extensive catalog of teen music. Years from now (years and years and years from now), my daughter will probably find herself driving her own teenager somewhere. A song will come on and — miraculously, musically — the years will peel away. She'll feel sixteen again, like I did a couple of days ago.
And the generation gap will never feel wider.
If you enjoyed this post, I invite you to order a copy of my new book Lovin' the Alien at www.lovinthealien.com.
July 24th; it's finally here. Finally, finally. My teenage daughter has been counting the days.
I mean, really, she's been counting them.
You see, her iPhone has a countdown app and months ago, she put today's date into it. While she finished up freshman year, studied for finals, wrote her last term papers, she would check it over and over. And over and over. As though time would somehow fast-forward more quickly if she obsessively stared at that little screen.
What is it they say about a "watched pot?" No matter, today's finally the day ...
Imagine. Dragons. In. Concert.
OMG.
This is the second time my daughter will see them live. (She is a very dedicated fan.) And, I don't mind this particular pastime. Not as expert as my offspring by any stretch, I have to say that I like the Imagine Dragons lyrics I do know ...
It's time to begin, isn't it?
I get a little bit bigger, but then I'll admit
I'm just the same as I was
Now don't you understand
That I'm never changing who I am
We could do worse.
Yesterday, I had back-to-back-to-back meetings in Boston. When I finally got home, I found my daughter and one of her besties knee-deep in poster boards, markers and cut paper. They were making "fan art." If you're about my age, you may remember attending concerts and bringing (or seeing) large banners that praised the band or made some sort of pun based on one of their songs or simply said "I love you, Jon Bon Jovi!" (In my case, it was Elton John — now that was a realistic crush!)
The idea, I guess, was that the rockstar in question would see your banner, realize that you were the love of his life, find you, marry you, take you on the road. (Then, he'd drop acid with you, drop out, drop into rehab, drop you for a younger groupie ... you get the idea.)
Well fan art today is totally like that. Except it's totally different.
Today's concert audience creates fan art and posts it online rather than off the first row of the balcony blue seats at Madison Square Garden. You create something brilliant, send it out into the cyberinternetosphere and hope that a member of the band will "Like" it or "Tweet" it, link it, re-post it or share it.
Despite millions of fans posting millions of examples of fan art, the chance of getting noticed is actually much higher today than it was for us. My daughter is Facebook friends with some of the members of Imagine Dragons. This may not mean they actually know each other, of course, at least not in the analog world. But she's a lot closer to her idols than I was with my $16 ticket in 1975.
And what better way to get their attention than through art? It's been a lot of years since my daughter chose a craft project over a YouTube video. Can't say that I mind this particular pastime one bit.
The girls worked hard on their fan art, took a quick break for dinner, and continued on their masterpiece long after yours truly went to bed. This morning, my daughter brought her phone to show me ...
"They didn't re-post it," she pouted with a tiny gleam in her eye. "But, look at this!"
There, on her wall, was a comment from one of the Dragons himself. "lol love it"
OMG!!!
Was it really him? Was it an assistant? A roadie? Some girl he picked up two shows ago? Who cares! It was good.
Sometimes, when you're almost sixteen, life can be very good indeed.
It's March 19th in New England and we have yet another snow day. After sleeping in and grumbling a bit, my teenage daughter settled herself on the TV room couch. My husband is (yet again) shoveling and I'm working in my home office.
But, my teen is not exactly alone; she has her iPhone and my iPad.
These days, it seems like the age-old divide between adolescents and their parents can be measured in personal electronic devices. Yes, I own as many as my daughter does, but they are not my lifelines (or more like additional limbs) as they seem to be for her.
When I was fifteen, the only new-fangled technology I owned was a Sony Walkman and a Texas Instruments calculator — both of which I cherished, BTW. If I wanted to watch something, I used my parents' TV. If I wanted to listen to music, I did so via cassette tapes and vinyl records, just like my mom and dad did. But that's where the common ground stopped.
At fifteen, music plays a critical role in helping us define who we are. In a recent New York Magazine story (Why You Truly Never Leave High School), Laurence Steinberg, a Temple University developmental psychologist and expert on adolescence, explained it this way:
“... no matter how old you are, the music you listen to for the rest of your life is probably what you listened to when you were an adolescent.”
Puberty and adolescence are the periods when our brains sort us into the categories that determine the type of person we are. "I'm the type of person who does this. I'm the sort of person who likes that." And then it follow us ever after. As Steinberg relates to himself, “There’s no reason why, at the age of 60, I should still be listening to the Allman Brothers.” But, at an earlier, impressionable, formative age, he determined that he was "the type of person who likes the Allman Brothers." And the rest, as they say, is history.
These days, my daughter is all about Imagine Dragons. This morning, she approached me with great excitement because the band has published (online, of course) its upcoming concert schedule. This summer at Boston University, but not open to the public. ("Arrrrrrrgh! Mom! Dad! Who do we know at B.U.?") December in Columbus, Ohio. (Errr ... no, despite the presence of our best friends there, we are not going to spend $1,000 on airfare to see a concert on a school night.) And, some future date that I can't remember in Paris. (Okay, that one I might consider ... Not.)
I asked her, reasonably enough, if they are her favorites now because she got to see them live a few weeks ago. She said they would be her favorites anyway.
Her love runs deep.
Mine does not.
Frankly, like countless mothers before me, I don't get it. I know — I'm vaguely aware of, would be a more appropriate choice of words — some of their songs. "It's Time" was covered on Glee, and "Radioactive" has a bizarre video with a gangster Lou Diamond Philips and a bunch of Muppets on crack. I am by no means an expert.
But, that's okay.
Frankly, I don't have to like her music. Just like my parents didn't have to like mine (although, in truth, my mom and dad were way cooler than the average moms and dads back then). I don't get the music, but I do get the feeling. And that feeling will stay with my teenager long past her teen years. Just like Steinberg, I'm a focus group of one that proves this.
What's in my car right now?
Eagles: The Very Best Of
Janis Ian Between the Lines
Billy Joel, Greatest Hits Volume I and II
Elvis Costello, My Aim is True
Carly Simon Hotcakes
The Best of the Commodores
Changes 1 Bowie
And, as always, a lot of Elton John.
This selection is more a snapshot of a moment in time than loyalty to a particular genre, artist or style. Most of these CDs would not please either my husband or my child. But, when I'm alone and I hit "Play," I am instantly transported to my teens — an emotional period, certainly, but one that was filled with hopes and dreams and expectations that have faded over the past 35 years.
Until, that is, I hit "Play."
