‘Papa Don’t Preach’ has just turned, wait for it, 30 years old.
(Pardon me while I peel my ancient ass off the office room floor in shock).
Released in 1986, the song caused major controversy in the US as the message of it and the accompanying video was interpreted to be about a pregnant teenage girl who decided not to have an abortion.
Pro-choice lobbyists were angry with Madonna for promoting ‘productive irresponsibility’ and cultural conservative groups praised what they perceived to be Madonna’s anti-abortion stance.
But I didn’t interpret it as being about anything that the pro-choicers OR the conservative groups said it was.
I was barely a teenager in 1986 when the song was released but I was very aware of it (and LOVED it!) as I grew older.
Of course, abortion was an unspoken word in Ireland in the 1980s and so I wouldn’t naturally have come to that conclusion as a young women in those days.
But now, looking back over the video – and what a flashback that is! – I realise how important the real message was, and still is, today.
It wasn’t a ‘Two Fingers’ move to her father in the video, it wasn’t promoting promiscuity, it wasn’t promoting reproductive recklessness – it was telling a particular story.
The story was of a young couple in love who discovered that they were pregnant and made a decision to become parents.
And in this story, they decide against abortion or carrying to term and offering the baby up for adoption – they are choosing to start a family.
It’s about choice.
Her choice as a woman to do what she wants to do with her body and her life.
Hear that, Ireland in 2016?
The whole world has been talking about female and reproductive choice forever and we’re still only getting around to it, painfully slowly.
Stop preaching to us and repeal the 8th already, ok?
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