Pop culture will reap what it sows - Independent

Modesty has a new hero. Forty-odd years after farmer Max Yasgur opened up his field in Woodstock to unwittingly usher in the sexual revolution -- ironically in a part of New York State known as Ulster County -- 61-year-old farmer Alan Graham from the original Ulster has valiantly tried to turn back the tide by ticking off R&B singer Rihanna on his farm after she stripped off during a video shoot for her new single We Found Love.

The worldwide headlines which followed (including my own personal favourite: "Get 'Em Off ... My Land!") were a telling reminder that the power of celebrity is now so great that merely asking a pop star to put on her bikini top feels like a radical act of countercultural defiance. That it was a Christian alderman from the Democratic Unionist Party defending his barley field against the encroachment of top-shelf values into mainstream culture only made it more newsworthy. Though who else was going to say it? The rest of us might wish that Rihanna and her ilk would cover themselves up, but we generally don't say it for fear of looking like Victorian prudes.

There was certainly plenty of that shuffling complicity going around. Some commentators in Belfast even sounded embarrassed that their wee province was being made to look like an evangelical Christian backwater -- Alabama without the hurricanes; Texas without the executions (well, not any more). Since when did people with terrorists in government get so touchy about their public image? Some even tried to suggest that Mr Graham was uncomfortable with the very notion of female nudity, which is a gross misrepresentation of what he actually said. All he told Rihanna, very politely by all accounts, is that he thought what she was doing was "inappropriate". He didn't get into the language of personal feelings in which public life is increasingly couched, as the world turns into a giant X Factor-style emotefest. He simply expressed a view of what was proper behaviour in public, in particular next to a public road, where schoolchildren were craning their necks out of buses to catch a glimpse of what was going on.

Is anyone seriously saying he was wrong?

This isn't merely about the increasing sluttiness of modern female celebrity, though there's no denying that trend. Rihanna has been criticised before for her overly sexualised image. Even someone who always said she wanted to be the "black Madonna" can take things too far. Check out the lyrics to S&M, whose video was banned in 11 countries: "Sex in the air, I don't care, I love the smell of it ... chains and whips excite me..." Who wants their daughter singing along to that at the school disco?

In someone who's desperate for publicity, or whose sales are on the slide, sexing up the image might be an understandable if cynical move (and yes, Christina Aguilera, that does mean you). But Rihanna doesn't need to do this. She's shifted 20 million albums; she's the youngest artist ever to have 10 number one singles in the US Billboard charts. She doesn't have to prostitute herself in this sordid, unbecoming way. She has power. She has the final word. It's bad manners as much as anything else to invade the consciousness of strangers with displays of manufactured hypersexuality.

Her response to criticism has always been defiant: "I'm a 23-year-old rock star with no kids. What's up with everybody wanting me to be a parent?"

But there's the rub. Symbolically, she is a parent. Madonna's most devoted audience may have been young women exploring their identities, forging their way in a confusing world, but times have changed. Rihanna's audience is now made up of young girls as the demographic for consumption of pop culture grows ever younger. She's simply encouraging these girls to think that success involves stripping off. That personal esteem is synonymous with sexiness. I'm risque, therefore I am. It narrows the range of visions to which girls can aspire, rather than expanding their horizons. Innocence is devalued, and hotness is all, not simply a part of a package. It's so aggressive that it becomes counter-erotic. There's no mystery left. Nothing's left for them to discover for themselves, in their own good time.

In many ways, though, the most radical expression of Alan Graham's intervention into the world of celebrity last week was not asking Rihanna to put on some clothes. His greatest rebellion was not knowing who Rihanna was. In a celebrity-obsessed, tittle tattle-saturated culture, where more people can probably name who came third in Strictly Come Dancing than who lives next door to them, the most revolutionary act may simply be to not know or care about fame. To ignore the white noise of MTV and Hello!

For most of us, that's a hard thing to do, because the tide truly is remorseless. There were even stories in the papers last week that Rihanna had called in beauticians in Belfast for a "2am emergency bikini wax", which not only represented the most inappropriate use ever of the word "emergency", but really ought to have been filed away under the heading TMI -- Too Much Information. Mr Graham is all the better for not letting this stuff invade his head, and we could do worse than follow his lead.

Parents alone can't do much to stem the flow of smut into modern pop culture, but they could try to stop swimming in it in their own daily lives, encouraging their children to do the same by example. Nothing of any value would be lost, but a portion of the soul corrupted by trivia and titillation might yet be restored. Or are they unwilling to make that sacrifice because they'd rather be at the party, letting it all hang out, than risk feeling left out?

Originally published in