Saturday, December 31, 2011

And Nothing Else She Was Doing Disappointed Them?

I don't ordinarily pay much attention to entertainment news, but this article from the December 31, 2011 Daily Mail just disgusts me:
New reports claim that Katy Perry wanted her husband to file for divorce so that she didn't have to be the one to end their marriage - and disappoint her evangelical Christan parents.
Hmmm.  "California Girls" has lyrics that are suggestive;  "I Kissed a Girl" and "Last Friday Night" are well beyond that:
Last Friday night Yeah we danced on tabletops And we took too many shots Think we kissed but I forgot
Last Friday night Yeah we maxed our credit cards And got kicked out of the bar So we hit the boulevard
Last Friday night We went streaking in the park Skinny dipping in the dark Then had a ménage-a-trois
Her parents are not responsible for Katy Perry's decision to make this kind of garbage aimed at the tweens, but if she held off on divorce to avoid disappointing her parents, this shows how much she is out of touch with her parents.  I am surprised (but not terribly surprised) to find out that under her real name, Katy Hudson, she released a gospel album in 2001.  The details are here.

4 comments:

  1. "Her parents are not responsible for Katy Perry's decision to make this kind of garbage ..."

    Of course they are responsible, in the end. She wouldn't have rebelled against them if they didn't emotionally damage her with their overbearing, emotionally reactive egotistical parenting style.

    When you emotionally react and parent by egotistical, angry judgments you either get Stockholm like conformity, hence Fred Phelps' kids, much of fanatical Islam OR rebellion.

    Growing up, Katy Perry was not allowed to watch television, could only listen to gospel music, and was read the Bible and only the Bible. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Perry bluntly said, “I didn’t have a childhood.” Like many people who are raised in a strict household, Perry let loose when she hit a certain age, producing music (she had previously released a gospel album in 2001 as Katy Hudson) she always wanted to with the help of Capitol Records.

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  2. You are making some assumptions about Katy Perry's parents parenting style. This sounds like a rather severe and perhaps even unbelievable upbringing: "read the Bible and only the Bible"? I've never seen a house like that, ever. Even the "not allowed to watch television" sounds a bit hard to believe. I've never seen a fundamentalist family that operated like that. Ever. Many had restrictions on what kids could watch (as do even many liberal homes).

    You are correct that some kids react rebelliously. I've seen them react that way to very strict homes, and very liberal homes, too. (Although rebellion in liberal homes often ends up with them in church or mosque.)

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  3. 15 years ago my husband and I became Christians. The church that we went to had strong restrictions on "wordly" things. We ended up getting rid of our cable and the kids were only allowed to watch Veggie Tales or other Christian things. I know there were other families who did not even get that. There was not a tv in the house. We only listened to Christian music, read Christian books (mostly the Bible). To say that this does not happen in my opionion is ignorant.
    We have been away from that church for over 7 years. We are still Christians but we saw the effect that this had on our older children and have not held to these extremes with our younger children.
    I hope that my children will hold to Christian values despite the judgement they suffered. They did not get to be kids and I severely regret that.

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  4. I suspect that this is a pretty rare situation. I certainly cannot recall running into any other Christians with this restrictive of a parenting model. I knew some who did not allow their kids to go to movies...but did let them watch TV. (Yes, even back 25 years ago, that was a pretty inconsistent approach.)

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