Defining the Rebel Archetype: The Bitch, the Bad Girl and the Rock Star
Madonna for Vogue Italia in 1992
In 1997, a sassy, slip dress-wearing, guitar-strumming singer named Meredith Brooks had a big hit. For months, “Bitch” was omnipresent, probably first and foremost for its “racy” title but also because, even though most of us were too embarrassed to admit it, girls identified with the admittedly cheesy song that was unapologetic in announcing some of us – and really, all of us – are messy amalgams of perfectly imperfect, logically irrational contradictions. Not only was our alterna-pop chick of the moment a proud, self-proclaimed bitch, she was “a lover, a child, a mother, a sinner, and a saint,” and she was most certainly “not ashamed.”
Like “bitch,” the word “rebel” has gotten a bad rap. It’s not used as an insult, the way bitch is, but it connotes insurgence and denotes resistance. So who is the "rebel"? Whether musically inclined or not, the rebel has a rock ‘n’ roll spirit. Maybe that’s why Keith Richards is one of my personal heroes. (If you haven’t read his autobiography, Life, I highly recommend you do.) This is a man who has said, “If you’re going to kick authority in the teeth, you might as well use two feet.” The rebel’s soul was born a little rugged. The rebel’s temper tends to run feverishly high. The rebel’s heart won’t be contained by a cage, not even one that’s cozy and comfortable. While the rebel is known, and often wrongly judged, for having a high tolerance for illicit substances, the rebel has no tolerance for intolerance.
Speaking of substances, my hedonistic element streak runs strong, but I’ve learned how to tame that frenzied, decadence-loving, tequila-guzzling beast. I constantly fight my shopping addiction; every day is a struggle. Especially with the same-day-delivery appeal of Net-a-Porter. Another challenge: not being at the beck and call of every emotional urge that surges through me. Freshman year in college, I wrote an essay about how we should never deny our emotions but embrace them, even if it means throwing a teary tantrum in the street like a two-year-old. I have since adjusted my views. There’s something to be said for some healthy emotional aloofness every now and again.
And then there’s sex. There’s always sex, isn’t there, at your mind’s forefront or lurking a little further back? I have always had a light preoccupation with sex. More specifically, sexiness. As a little kid, I didn’t play house. I played dress-up and my favorite character was “hooker.” This probably had something to do with the Pretty Woman posters that popped up everywhere in 1990, and the fact that my heart skipped a beat when I first saw Julia Roberts in her patent-leather thigh-high boots and skintight cutout dress. Madonna’s music videos had me transfixed. I stared as she slinked across the floor on all fours to lap from a bowl of milk in the cool blue light of her “Express Yourself” video, and I thought, “This is it. This is what I want to be when I grow up.” No, not a pop star, not a cat either, but an unapologetic seductress who deliberately objectifies herself and reaps empowerment, not degradation, from it. While taking fake drags from my candy cigarettes, I daydreamed about being a sixteen-year-old “bad girl.”
By the time I was an actual sixteen-year-old, I had done acid; become a savvy shoplifter; and had sex a few times, the first on a day I skipped school to “get it over with” on the wall-to-wall-carpeted floor of a half-abandoned apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. I was also a straight-A student who prided herself on having a wider vocabulary than her English teachers. I was the very good bad girl with a report card too sparkling-clean to blow my cover. But, like any teenager, I was stumbling in the dark, persona murky and identity unconfirmed.
Fourteen years later, I’m just beginning to figure it out, and by it, I don’t just mean who I am. I mean my place in this magical, terrifying, colorful carnival of a world. God, that sounds cliché. But it’s the truth! I’m a “yes” person. I like to learn through experience and say, “Why not?” to everything I possibly can. Through plenty of experiences – which have ranged from waking up covered in my own blood with a broken nose and one shoe on after a whiskey-drinking contest I refused to lose to going undercover as an erotic maid for a college term paper to nearly moving to Panama at 21 to shack up with a washed-up French surfer nearly twice my age to a run-in with the Colombian cocaine cartel in Cartagena – I have learned that sometimes there are reasons why not and “no” is, indeed, the wiser answer. But where’s the fun in that? Besides, wisdom doesn’t come from having the wherewithal to turn things down. Much of wisdom is realizing we’re not here to know why things happen the way they do. We’re never going to know why things happen the way they do. So let’s give it up. Wisdom comes from experience. Just look at Keith Richards, and the lines of sapience all over his face. Those only come from a life of exploits, misadventures, and sure, probably way too much partying. It’s he who is also quoted as saying, “It’s great to be here. It’s great to be anywhere.” I wholeheartedly agree, Keith.
So in honor of him and all the other badass-looking heroes out there who have swayed to the riffs of their own guitars (or however that expression goes), this column will be about staying spontaneous while getting a grip on reality. Learning how to create without destroying something in the process – unless that thing has got to go. We must always be willing to let go, even when we really don’t want to. Growing up without getting boring. Making conscious choices with a sense of consequence. Having fun without sabotaging yourself. Taking down some shadows while soaking up the sunlight. And knocking down some antiquated old stereotypes. Who says the freewheeling “party girl,” banging around town in 6” platforms and a scanty crop top should be taken for an illiterate, coke-blowing airhead? You can love sex and shopping and rousing debate and classic literature in equal measures. You can do whatever you want, especially if you don’t really care what people think of you. That’s true empowerment and after all, that’s what being a rebel is all about.