Currently listening to…
I wasn’t expecting to make my abstinence anthem analysis a series but as I spend my days dredging my emotional innards for the sake of a future bestseller, I find myself remembering core memories through music. That's probably why I made the seemingly random decision to add a “currently listening” block to the top of each post. (Or maybe I just miss MySpace?)
I digress.
In preparation for an upcoming Father’s Day post, I revisited a CD I had on repeat in 2004. My dad borrowed Avril Lavigne’s Under My Skin from me for an extended amount of time before I playfully stole it back from the CD player in his car. While I was pleasantly surprised that I still remembered almost every word, my surprise quickly turned to sadness, nostalgia, and confusion… as these things often go.
You held my hand and walked me home, I know
While you gave me that kiss you were something like this
It made me go, oh, oh
You wiped my tears got rid of all my fears
Why did you have to go?
Guess it wasn't enough to take up some of my love
Guys are so hard to trust
My dad and I haven’t spoken since my 29th birthday so the amusement I experienced dancing around in my kitchen to music we used to enjoy together only lasted as long as the most relevant-to-me-now song. That song happened to be “Don’t Tell Me,” the third track and first single from Under My Skin.
Did I not tell you that I'm not like that
Girl, the one who gives it all away, yeah?
The lyrics had my alarm bells ringing — the ones I’ve finely tuned to identify antiquated abstinence-only messaging. I was not shocked to learn that it’s already been speculated that this song is about abstinence. In a 2004 interview with MTV, Avril doubled down on the song actually being about strength and resisting pressure.
“There are a lot of guys out there who just want to take you out to dinner and then, like basically go home and ‘unhh’ you. That’s what a lot of guys are like and I just think girls need to be strong and not let any guy pressure them into doing anything.”
— Avril Lavigne, "Avril Lavigne To Show Fans What Lies Beneath on New Album" mtv.com, February 2004
I’m inclined to believe Avril, who wrote the song when she was 19 years old and probably navigating situations like the one depicted in the music video, where her partner leaves her bed after, presumably, being denied sex. What she called strength in 2004, her most recent YouTube comments now call consent.
The way the lyrics contextualize sex is all too familiar, though. The song first makes a “that girl” comparison in the pre-chorus that comes off a little slut-shamey in present day. It goes on to define exactly how the singer is different from “that girl” in that she “gives it all away.” Context from the music video and her own explanation of the song make it pretty clear that the thing Avril isn’t giving away is sex.
Did you think that I was gonna give it up to you this time?
Did you think that it was somethin' I was gonna do and cry?
Don't try to tell me what to do
Don't try to tell me what to say
You're better off that way
Finally, an association is made between having sex and a reaction presented as inevitable: crying. I touched on the way language influences our collective ideals about sex and how they negatively impact young women in my first draft of Hard Things. It’s something I’m constantly exploring.
“The language of ‘losing’ and ‘taking’ virginity perpetuates the notion that women are permanently depreciated by an act that does not, and should not, define womanhood.”
Unlearning what I’ve been taught about abstinence and the concept of virginity is hard work. In Jessica Valenti’s The Purity Myth, she and Thomas Macaulay Millar brilliantly illustrate a necessary reframing of sex using what they call a performance model as opposed to a commodity model. (Jessica’s Substack is linked here. I frequently reference her book and I highly recommend reading her work.)
“The commodity model assumes that when a woman has sex, she loses something of value. It further assumes that sex earlier in her history is more valuable than sex later. Because it centers on collaboration, a performance model better fits the conventional feminist wisdom that consent is not the absence of a ‘no’ but affirmative participation.”
— Thomas Macaulay Millar, Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power & a World Without Rape
Don't think that your charm
And the fact that your arm is now around my neck
Will get you in my pants, I'll have to kick your ass
And make you never forget
I'm gonna ask you to stop thought I liked you a lot
But I'm really upset (really upset)
Get outta my head, get off of my bed
Yeah, that's what I said
As the song continues, it becomes more clear why it’s now being celebrated as an ode to consent ahead of its time, and maybe it is, but I think it’s also possible that Avril was responding to another type of pressure. The album reviews for Under My Skin are very 2004. Rolling Stone went from celebrating her reassuring “just-say-no messaging” to calling her a prude. The fine line between good girl and bad influence is one that pop stars (and all women, really) still walk today, and it was undeniably worse in the early 2000s.
“The syntax may be tortured, but the singer sounds just fine: a righteous prude, confidently fending off the creeps.”
— Kalefa Sannah for Rolling Stone, Under My Skin Album Review, June 2004
Here’s what I know for sure: abstinence-only messaging was (and still is) pervasive and it’s not a stretch to say that it might have informed the coming-of-age pop acts of the new millennium. Regardless of whether or not it impacted them, it certainly impacted me, and so did this song.
This guilt trip that you put me on won't mess me up
I've done no wrong
Any thoughts of you and me have gone away
Here’s another thing I know for sure: there’s clarity in distance. “Don’t Tell Me” hits differently today than it did when I was a parent-pleasing pre-teen. I’ve spent a lot of my adult life rejecting the ideas presented in lyrics like these. This song that I once blared in my headphones no longer speaks to me. Coincidentally, the person I used to listen to this song with doesn’t either. Learning that my dad’s conditional love for me could be removed at his leisure has given me the space to funnel the energy I once expended for his emotional support into piecing together the sonic memories of my childhood that landed me where I am today. I’ll leave you with Avril’s final heartbreaking and eerily well-timed words on the track.
I'm better off alone anyway
Incredibly well written which is no surprise. I love your take on this and as a mother to a daughter, this subject is something I’ve been navigating since I found out she will deal with the same things I did as a young adult but hopefully she will be more equipped to deal with it.