True You (12 page)

In concert for
Rhythm Nation,
feeling your love and feeling fraudulent at the same time.

A
s I approached age twenty-one, I realized that I had worried far too long about having a perfect body. I knew that the comparisons others had made between my body type and non–African American body types were unfair. I had internalized those comparisons and on some level had actually been traumatized by them. I wanted to be free of all that.

Before
Control
was released, a record company executive told me how he ordered the art director to take an X-Acto knife and slim down my image on the cover.

“You look too heavy,” he said.

When it came time to do the “What Have You Done for Me Lately” video, the record people thought it was important that I appear thinner. That’s all I needed to hear! I’d been told that my whole life, but at this critical juncture, with my career taking off, I didn’t have the wherewithal to argue. Once again, I went along with the program.

I went to Canyon Ranch in Arizona with Paula Abdul, then a choreographer and friend. We shared a house and spent weeks exercising. I loved the natural beauty of my surroundings, but I hated the exercise. I’ve always hated it. Still, I was as motivated as ever to come out on top. I did the strenuous routine, the running, the hiking, the no-nonsense diet. I felt good when it was over. I enjoyed the compliments about my “new” shape. I shot the video and did in fact reshape my image. But at what cost?

It was a time in my life when I should have been enjoying success. But I wasn’t. In many ways, whether in control or not, I was still preoccupied about body rather than soul. I knew that had to change.

I have friends who think that I grew up quickly. Others are convinced I grew up slowly. I believe both statements are true.

As a child, I worked in the world of adults. I had adult concerns and responsibilities. I could act like an adult. I could converse with adults. Indeed, I had an adult salary and certain adult
responsibilities. But that didn’t make me an adult. It wasn’t until the end of the 1980s, when I began working on
Rhythm Nation,
that I began to view myself in completely grown-up terms.
Control
was a necessary first step in moving from childhood to adulthood. But it was with
Rhythm Nation
that I felt mature enough to address urgent social concerns. I also felt strong enough to ignore those business advisers who argued against making a record that dealt with issues like racism.

Looking back, I see that I made the decision as a confident adult, not a frightened child. I stuck to my beliefs, and not because I was stubborn or felt compelled to prove anything. I stuck to my beliefs because they were important to me. They were born out of my view of the world. I didn’t see myself as an expert on social issues, any more than I see myself as an expert on more personal issues. At the same time, I couldn’t ignore the blatant injustice in a country pledged to equality. I felt obligated to speak about troubling aspects of our society.

“We are in a race between education and catastrophe,” I sang in “Race.” I believed it then; and twenty-two years later, I still do.

I was very gratified when I saw my songs reach deep into the hearts of so many young people, living in every condition imaginable. I received a flood of responses to my music, much of it surprisingly personal.

Twins—a young man and woman—roughly my age told me about growing up in an impoverished neighborhood in one of our biggest cities. Their mom was a dark-skinned black woman and their dad a fair-skinned Dominican. She worked as a domestic
and he was a part-time mechanic. The young man—I’ll call him Dexter—had his dad’s light coloring, and the girl—I’ll call her Deidre—resembled her mother. So dramatic was the difference in coloring that not even their teachers believed they were twins. They carried their birth certificates wherever they went, just to prove it.

In school, Dexter received better treatment than Deidre. He attracted girls as well as the teachers’ favors. Deidre was largely ignored. They both were interested in drama and were equally talented, but it was Dexter, not Deidre, who was accepted into the high school acting society. Deidre was every bit as attractive as Dexter, but her skin tone, even in this so-called enlightened era, held her back.

When they were teenagers, their parents died in a car accident and they were sent to stay with a relative who lived on food stamps in a tiny tenement apartment. She treated Dexter like a prince and Deidre like dirt. Brokenhearted, Deidre ran away to another city, where she was never able to escape the cycle of poverty. She worked in a factory and tried to complete high school at night. She lived in a boardinghouse run by a church group, but the church fell on hard times, the house closed down, and Deidre was forced to move in with a coworker. The coworker turned out to be a drug addict. Not long afterward, when Deidre’s job was eliminated, she found herself living on the streets.

For years, Dexter searched for his sister in vain. He won a scholarship to college and it was in his junior year that, in his own words, he decided “to take control.” He found an organization that dealt with missing children, and three months later they located
Deidre in a psychiatric hospital. Rather than deal with Deidre’s problems, the inadequately funded facility kept her sedated on heavy drugs. Dexter valiantly fought the system and found a way to get his sister better care. He moved her to the city where he was attending college, and in time, she improved. She got her high school degree and was admitted to a business school.

When the twins wrote me, they were doing well and said, in an almost mystical way, that the musical background of their journey was
Control
and
Rhythm Nation
. The love of one sibling for the other had prevailed. Of course I was flattered and grateful that music could provide positive energy for anyone looking for motivation.

At the time of
Rhythm Nation
, my motivation was to open my mind and heart to subjects that were calling to me—problems I knew needed to be highlighted. I didn’t want to appear glamorous or hip. I didn’t want to draw attention away from the important matters at hand. I wore the
Rhythm Nation
uniform, an all-black outfit that symbolized the severity of the issues. It was the first time I wasn’t singing about romance or relationships.

At the start of the project, I was still not comfortable exposing my body. In this sense, I continued to carry that self-consciousness about being too big that had followed me since childhood. I was happy to cover myself from head to foot in black.

Not long after the record came out, a woman my age wrote me that she had also decided to wear black every day for the next three weeks. For her, it was a protest against what she saw as sexual harassment.

Rhythm Nation
was a powerful time for me. I was developing a sense of self-esteem, partially because, through these songs, I was able to transcend some of my own problems and concentrate on societal issues. I was able to live with the criticism that I was moving away from the
Control
vibe that had brought me success. I was feeling a great deal of love.

One man who lived in a foreign country wrote me that the record spoke to him about the nature of assertiveness.

To be a loving adult—to accept the responsibilities that come with a mature and generous love—isn’t easy. I have no prescriptions for achieving that goal. Most of what I’ve learned is from listening to others and gleaning wisdom from the lessons of their lives.