“Teenage Dream” by Katy Perry (reworked post), Tuesday, February 27, 2024
When I was a Christian teenager, a book started circulating in my church youth group. Joshua Harris wrote about youth with wisdom and authority that seemed logical and categorical for every situation to the young women who read I Kissed Dating Goodbye. The book’s thesis argued that dating was a worldly alternative to the more purposeful Christian concept of courtship. Dating fueled erotic passions, which must be saved for a heterosexual marriage. Dating is casual, even preteens dates. Courtship was about vetting a marriage partner and would happen in the late teen years or early adulthood.
YOU THINK I'M PRETTY WITHOUT ANY MAKEUP ON. Josh Harris’s I Kissed Dating Goodbye was part of a movement I’ve written about a lot: purity culture. How much this movement influenced young Katy Hudson, a pastor’s daughter in Southern California, touring with a slew of Christian rockers on the heels of her debut, self-titled album, I can only speculate what went through the 17-year-old star’s head as she walked arm-in-arm with boyfriend Matt Thiessen, the frontman of Christian music’s answer to Blink-182, Relient K. On Christian radio, Rebecca St. James’ “Wait for Me” became an abstinence anthem. Millions of teens attended True Love Waits rallies and pledged their virginity until marriage, sealing their commitment with purity rings. Katy Hudson’s Christian music career was short-lived and something of CCM folklore. The album is no longer in print, and the record label Red Hill Records, a pop subsidiary of Pamplin Records, went out of business later that year. Unlike some of her future younger peers who were influenced by purity culture--Selena Gomez, the Jonas Brothers, Demi Lovato--Hudson wasn’t around in Christian music long enough to make a memorable statement about purity culture.
LET’S GO ALL THE WAY TONIGHT. Hudson reemerged in 2008 as Katy Perry, taking her mothers’ maiden name as her stage name. Perry told The Guardian in 2017, “I created this wonderful character called Katy Perry that I very much am, and can step into all the time, but I created that character out of protection . . . I was scared that if you saw me, Katheryn Hudson . . . you’d be like, ‘that’s not glamorous.’” The new curated persona Katy Perry was a party girl in her mid-20s. She “kissed a girl and . . . liked it,” a song which flouted Christian views on homosexuality, much to the chagrin to her parents. Following her 2008 rebranded debut, One of the Boys, Perry released Teenage Dream in 2010. The album was partially inspired by the singer’s falling in love with and marriage to comedian Russell Brand. While One of the Boys is a quirky album with moments of sexuality, Teenage Dream is a much more sexual album, even featuring Perry in the nude on the album cover, lying on a cloud, provocatively obscured for the censors. There have been sex albums before and after Teenage Dream, many of which had no context with purity culture. But Teenage Dream feels like it has a forbidden longing--years of repression and rebellion summating into the speaker saying “I might get your heart racing in my skin-tight jeans.” And yet, the song “Teenage Dream,” sounds very much like the sexual fantasy of teenagers thinking about their first night with a sexual partner, whether in the confines of marriage or just a loving relationship. With so much “smut” being released post-Teenage Dream, it’s interesting to look back at the album and remember how influential it was on pop music today and how it was probably constructed by evangelical purity culture. Doesn’t that make the forbidden fruit taste sweeter?
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