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Eva Cassidy and Real Empowerment

I wish I could have met Eva Cassidy.  I can’t; she died a while ago, but I think her story has much to say to a culture whose buzzword these days is “empowerment.”  In the fallout of another halftime show bonanza (it isn’t the first, it won’t be the last), debate rages as to whether two voluptuous women of Latin heritage turned family-friendly entertainment into softcore pornography or whether their command of the stage and demand for your attention “empowered” women. 

If I may tip my hand, I fall in the more conservative camp.  I found the first 20 seconds raw and uncomfortable enough that our family simply shut the TV off for the next 20 minutes (Hey, no one held a gun to my head and demanded I watch!  You could have done the same thing too).  It was uncomfortable for various reasons which I don’t care to articulate more than this:

I don’t want to give to another woman the kind of attention that belongs exclusively to my wife; 
I don’t want my sons to develop the habit of objectifying women, especially women older than their mom (if you think most men stuck around for any other reason, have I got a great deal on a bridge for you!);
I don’t want my daughter, already predisposed to insecurity, thinking the right way to bring positive attention to herself is by sacrificing her pride and dignity.

To be fair, both of the women who performed are incredibly talented.  But I would bet my mortgage that 99 out of 100 guys didn’t watch the halftime show because they enjoyed the music.  Call me a religious prude, old fashioned, conservative, codger, party-pooper, whatever; I was uncomfortable.  I'm not asking you to agree.  The halftime show was many things to many people, but I won’t be tricked into believing it was “empowering.” 

Which is why I wish I could have met Eva Cassidy, why I would have paid top dollar to see her perform.  If you aren’t familiar with her music, why do you hate yourself?  She had an angelic voice that can be easily mistaken for Patsy Cline or Ella Fitzgerald.  Powerful, almost without trying; an innate feel for the movement and emotion of any song from any genre; a distinct ability to drift away from and back to the melody line without losing the song.  

But you’ve likely never heard of her because she never won an award, and her rise to popularity came posthumously.  She never showed skin or moved seductively, instead relying exclusively on her voice and her love of music.  Perhaps the most awe-inspiring singer for generations lived and died in relative obscurity and has more to teach about “empowerment” than anyone using sex to sell a song, an album, or a football game.

It wasn’t for want of being noticed that she never personally knew fame.  She had record deals and contracts placed before her, waiting for her to sign, but negotiations always collapsed on the table.  This is because she refused to box herself into a certain genre of music, or a certain image which would have deprived her of who she really was.  A record company wanted to sign her as a country music star (see Penny To My Name), but she wanted to sing jazz too (Cheek to Cheek).  So a record company tried to sign her as a jazz vocalist, but she wanted to sing gospel too (People Get Ready).  A gospel label wanted to sign her but she wanted to sing the blues (Blues in the Night), and she wouldn’t sign a blues contract because she wanted to cover Cyndi Lauper (Time After Time).  

Some might say she wasted a golden opportunity, but there was more at stake than fame.  She didn’t want a record company to limit her to one particular genre of music or to reduce her identity to what they thought would sell a record.  So, she sacrificed fame and fortune to remain who she was. She preferred to sing and play in stuffy, smoke-filled bars and poorly attended churches with freedom to be who she was as opposed to sold-out arenas under the cruel thumb of a record company who controlled her identity.

If fame came with chains, she didn’t want it.  If a record company could make her rich in exchange for recreating her in their image, she would rather not.  She had too much self-respect to be bullied into becoming someone she wasn’t for the sake of selling a record.  She could have played halftime shows, gone on a world tour, produced a collaborative album with whoever the latest R&B star is, all with insurmountable misery, hamstrung by a record contract forcing her into a box where she didn’t belong.

Empowerment is not found in bare skin, showing the right curves in the right places, moving said curves in provocative ways, “stickin’-it-to-the-man,” all capped off with a token children’s choir.  Personally, those who find "empowerment" there, I would rather not serve as my daughter’s role model.  I want my daughter to learn (obviously second to my wife) from Eva Cassidy.  Denying the allure of fame and fortune because it comes with baggage you’d rather not carry; opting instead to live and die in relative obscurity without sacrificing personal joy, happiness, integrity and identity—That is real empowerment.  

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