I’m a 22-year-old who’s trying to be a writer and comedian living in Brooklyn, so obviously I have to do something else for money—I get to be a punching bag for two 7-year-olds for $22 an hour. In other words, I babysit.
The kids I watch are learning things on the hard streets of their public arts school faster than the average suburban child. While we were on the swings one day, we’d just finished discussing whether or not Beyoncé plays Minecraft when one of them asked me what the word “sexy” means. A kid at school told them it was inappropriate and they wanted to know why. So I tried to give a G-rated definition of “sexy” and explained that it’s an adult word that they should be careful saying at age seven. Which made me think, how old was I when I found out what sexy was?
I searched my brain for the answer and I realized that no one had told me what sexy is—I learned it from a song. I was in fourth grade when I listened to “Buttons” by The Pussycat Dolls featuring Snoop Dogg. Nicole Scherzinger leads the girl band and seductively sings, “I’m a sexy mama / Who knows just how to get what I wanna,” which shook me to my core.
I remember this song so well because it was the first song I ever asked my dad to buy for me on iTunes. I sat there mortified next to him on our family computer, listening to six girls sing about taking their clothes off, and told him it was okay if he bought the clean version. From that day on I listened to the song on repeat, eagerly printing out the lyrics and studying the words with my friends, pretending to be sexy and unlocking the secrets of adulthood. I started thinking of other songs about sexuality and the lessons I learned from them.
“Magic Stick” by Lil’ Kim was the first time I heard the word “clit” and then I didn’t hear the word again until I was 18: “I got the magic clit / I know if I get licked once, I get licked twice.” 50 Cent’s “Candy Shop” was about licking the “lollipop,” an idea later revisited by Lil Wayne in 2008 with his song “Lolipop.” “I Kissed A Girl” by Katy Perry opened my mind to the existence of lesbianism. Actually, my friend played it for me before she told me that she kissed a girl named Leah on her softball team. As the list of songs grew, I realized that pop music was my sex ed.
Sex education was nonexistent at my public middle school, so what I knew about sex I mostly learned from song lyrics, innuendos in TV shows and movies, and my peers. Because most of my friends and I learned about sex this way, a lot of topics were left half explained—for instance, blow jobs were a difficult concept for me to wrap my mind around for awhile. The music that was popular on the radio at the time that hormones were flooding my adolescent body was extremely sexual—”Me & U” by Cassie, “Goodies” by Ciara, “Promiscuous” by Nelly Furtado (featuring Timbaland). And because no adults were teaching us this stuff and it was everywhere, people like Pitbull had to.
“My Humps” by The Black Eyed Peas was one of the most important songs of my sexual education, so naturally critics hated it—one said it “mistakes real humor for sophomoric jr. high level sexual titillation.” Nonetheless, the song deeply affected me as a fourth grader. In the third verse Fergie sings, “They say I’m really sexy / The boys they wanna sex me” and that may have been how I learned about sex itself. Regardless, it made me draw the correlation between sex and sexy—if you think someone is sexy, it means you want to have sex with them. Interesting.
Also, the chorus of the song really simplifies it all—the “lumps” Fergie refers to are my impending breasts and ass, and once I have them, I’ll drive these brothers crazy: “My hump / My hump, my hump, my hump / My hump, my hump, my hump / My hump, my hump, my hump / My lovely lady lumps (love) / My lovely lady lumps (love) / My lovely lady lumps (love) / In the back and in the front (love).”
Fast forward ever so slightly to 2010, “BedRock” by Young Money featuring Lloyd was another influential song to me. In the hook, Lloyd sings, “My room is the G-spot / Call me Mr. Flinstone, I can make your bed rock.” This spawned a lot of conversations about what a G-spot was and where it’s located, which middle school boys loved to discuss. What they didn’t know is that they would soon find that they also have G-spots and maybe one day would also learn where theirs were located. In Nicki Minaj’s verse, she raps, “Maybe it’s time to put this pussy on your sideburns,” which is some visual songwriting about oral sex.Â
Not all of the learning was fun. “Runaway Love” by Ludacris in 2006 walked me through unprotected sex with a sad but beautiful chorus by Mary J. Blige. The song has separate narratives that follow three girls who are suffering. I always found the last verse most interesting; it’s about an 11-year-old girl who’s having sex with a 16-year-old boy. Ludacris raps, “Emotions run deep as she thinks she’s in love / So there’s no protection, he’s using no glove,” and when she becomes pregnant, Ludacris says, “Knowing her mama will blow it all outta proportion / Plus she lives poor so no money for abortion.” This not only taught me that abortions existed, but also that they’re expensive. Also, shout out to Ludacris for teaching me what contraception was.
The Hot 100 was responsible for my sexual education. I’m not saying that 50 Cent guided me through the steps of giving a blow job, but he created the dialogue about healthy things to do sexually. At the very least, these songs started many “Do you know what this song is really about?” conversations that weren’t being had otherwise. For many kids, pop music and the media are big parts of sexual education. What we’re exposed to as adolescents has influence on our sexuality, sexual identity, and how we perceive sex, and though I took an all-encompassing class on sexuality in high school, by that time I had already been sexually active for two years. I know that the legal age of consent varies from 16 to 18 in the United States, but we shouldn’t wait until then to educate teens about sex.
Hopefully today’s pop music is a healthy outlet for teens to educate themselves about sex because for some teens… no one else will.