I think it’s safe to say that we don’t live in an age of restraint—at least as far as celebrity discretion is concerned. What once might have been considered scandalous or career-ending, such as, say, a sex tape, is now just another avenue for getting on the cultural radar. As Kim Kardashian has proven, it can be a very successful strategy.
Then we have those jaw-droppingly explicit scenes on premium cable shows like HBO’s Game of Thrones, Showtime’s Masters of Sex or Starz’s Spartacus. Nudity is popping up more and more in music videos, too, as it has in recent songs from Justin Timberlake and Robin Thicke. And even when risqué content stops shy of showing everything, song lyrics and racy imagery still leave little to the imagination from the likes of Rihanna, Beyoncé and Miley Cyrus, among many others.
Once upon a time artists and entertainers were guided by a sense of decorum. They didn’t want to shame or embarrass themselves by participating in something tawdry. But those days seem like a distant, faded memory these days. Shame, we’re regularly told in our no-boundaries, no-limits culture, isn’t something that someone should ever feel with regard to the free expression of their sexuality—no matter how the absence of restraint might negatively impact others.
But for at a least a few entertainers, thankfully, there are limits. And for several who’ve recently talked about where they draw the line, the reason for those limits might surprise you: They don’t want to embarrass their families.
When asked by Glamour magazine why she refuses to do nude scenes, for example, actress Jessica Alba said, “I don’t want my grandparents to see my boobs. That’s it. It would be weird at Christmas.” She also added that she didn’t think shedding her clothes would add to her movies’ aesthetic excellence. “I mean, really, if you look at the movies I have done, getting naked would never ‘elevate’ the picture.”
Meanwhile, singer and actress Demi Lovato stated she’s backing away from putting sex in her lyrics because, “There’s still that weird feeling in the back of my head that’s like, ‘All right, I know that my mom and dad are going to hear it and my little sister, and that’s really weird for me.'”
And Prince explained to Essence magazine why he no longer uses profanity in his music: “Did you ever hear Muhammad Ali curse? Would you curse in front of your kids? To your mother? Marsha, Lianne, Janelle, they’re all my sisters. We shouldn’t curse at them. We need to treat all of them, and all people, like royalty.”
Prince hasn’t always been interested in treating his fans and family “like royalty” when it comes to shying away from vulgar content, of course. (Exhibit A: all of the 1980s). But the fact that he’s turned that corner this late in his career, that he’s come to a new appreciation of how his family might be harmed or embarrassed by his edgy material, is heartening to me. It suggests that even someone as deliberately provocative as the Purple One once was can still realize that creative material doesn’t have to be offensive, explicit or transgressive to be artistically engaging and commercially viable.
And that means it’s theoretically possible that Kim Kardashian, Justin Timberlake, Robin Thicke, Rihanna, Beyoncé and Miley could have a similar awakening somewhere down the road. I certainly hope so, for the sake of their families … and for the sake of the rest of us whose lives might be influenced—positively or negatively—by the choices these influential entertainers make and the self-imposed limits they might one day choose to embrace.
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