Photo credit: Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa
I was raised in the '80s by a feminist. When I was a young child, Mum and my little brother and I often drove long distances together. Driving late into the night, we played our favorite songs over and over on the wonky little tape player at the front of our
split-screen VW camper van. I loved to sing along.
Sometimes as we drove, Mum would talk to me about the songs, pointing out the messages they were sending, explaining why some of those messages weren’t OK. She got me thinking about
why Charlene is so keen to persuade a “discontented mother and a regimented wife” not to run away and explore what else life might have to offer. (And what, for that matter, she might mean by “things that a woman ain’t supposed to see.”) She made me wonder why Eric Clapton thinks...