The Dragontree

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
–  Ralph Waldo Emerson

I don’t actively listen to the radio, but when my ipod dies I’ll turn it on in my car. Maybe I’m older now, but I don’t get it. The majority of the really popular stuff really offends me with its lack of substance, over-sexualizing of everything, trite messages, and cookie cutter sound.

This is top 40 radio, so the numbers of people in a younger age range that hear this stuff is HUGE! Why is it that when a female singer decides that they want to “grow up” and change their image it automatically relates to hardly wearing any clothes? Of course, the result seems to be so many girls that seem to be too young running around in very little clothing. We can assume that it wasn’t really their decision to make, but more of a dictation by popular culture.

I’ve read about performers such as Rhianna claiming that they empower women while the stills from her latest videos seem to have her wearing only prosthetic lizard skin over her breasts. Where is the power in that? Where is the power in singing music that someone else has written and fitting into a cookie cutter overblown version of sexuality that seems to have been created?

I like to think of myself as open minded. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t see strength and the definition of adulthood in these things. I see no personality. I see no control of oneself. As one who has long been involved in the music industry, I know that there are executives making these decisions to package these people in a very precise way…and it is so disheartening.

Pick up a guitar. Put pen to paper. Dress how you want, but do it with a CONVICTION that is YOU and not what you think you are supposed to be. Be intelligent. Speak your mind. Own your body. Do with it what rings true to yourself and not what peers or a particularly broken industry tells you to.

-Meredith DeLoca (Assistant Spa Director – The Dragontree PDX)