Why Do These Tears Come at Night?

. . . Baby One More Time was the soundtrack to my daydreams. It was the first cassette tape I owned and provided one of the earliest narratives in which I remember actively inserting myself.The ellipses preceding the album title obscure the full name of Britney Spears’ first single “(Hit Me) Baby One More Time.” And the space they leave is a good representation of the dark spots these songs created in my psyche.

I had great parents who were both busy artists, amicably separated and independently working their asses off. That meant I spent a fair amount of time happily creating and exploring art alone in my room. Perhaps to their disappointment, what resonated with me most was pop music.

We did not attend church and in some ways it became my gospel. The tropes I modeled myself after and the narratives I repeated to myself came from two-minute pop songs, rather than religious text. Like every generation of teenagers, early 90s pop consumers had our own language and code of ethics. Unbeknownst to us, though, a lot of it was constructed by marketing executives with nothing new to say. When I look into the dark spots left in the narrative that I assessed myself against and reinterpreted privately, a lot of the story doesn’t hang together.

Listening to this music still stimulates the humiliating private fantasies it did when I was a kid: tossing drumsticks in the air before catching them to deliver the downbeat, doing an ollie after whipping out a biting comeback to someone who wronged my friends, and, obviously, dancing on stage while wearing rhinestones and ripped denim.

Here are some of the obviously not-new (i.e. backwards) things in Britney’s oeuvre: almost all of her lyrical content specifically addresses heterosexual men, though most of her fan base was and is young girls, women and queer men. It often binds success with male approval (I don’t wanna live without your love/ I was born to make you happy). If it weren’t for the Madonna collaboration “Me Against the Music,” I’m fairly certain Britney’s singles would not pass the Bechdel test. These things are the dark spots, the ellipses. I couldn’t look at them and so I had to black them out. They didn’t glitter like the content that made me feel invincible.

Here are some of the glittery parts: most of her music videos feature Britney dancing alone or with other women. I’m sure you could easily argue that this, too, was designed for the male gaze. But in my prepubescent heart, Britney had agency. She was grinding on a pole, white bedsheets or hot pink imitation Louis Vuitton upholstery for her. These felt like intimate, female-defined spaces, because women were usually the only people in them. And I thought that I too could own my budding sexuality.

We are creatures of mimicry. That’s why seeing yourself represented in the media is so important. It helps you believe that your personal narrative is real. So few of us experience this privilege. I was Lucky enough to see a Piece of Me in Britney.

This year I started volunteering for my local sexual assault hotline. Volunteers participate in a twelve-hour training program and learn guiding principles to support survivors. I have discovered that these tips are excellent guidelines for interacting with anyone, particularly if you’re engaged in activism or service.

The work is necessary for me as a survivor of sexual assault. It requires me to be levelheaded and honest with myself. If I’m telling people that their assault isn’t their fault, that means mine couldn’t have been my fault, either. Every phone conversation is further confirmation of this. They also reveal the internalized misconceptions that led me to believe it was ever my fault in the first place.

Now, I need these songs to underscore the principles of social work that guide my activism. The “levity” of pop music and the sexual implications of Britney’s music videos are not appropriate for every survivor. A lot of her lyrics promote ideas to which I’m deeply opposed. Even when appropriate, a thin, wealthy white woman currently enjoying a four year residency in Las Vegas’s Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino is not going to be a solace for everyone. Maybe not most people. But, for me, subverting the meaning of something that permeated my childhood so intensely feels like spitting in the face of everyone who has ever felt entitled to my body. I give you:

Ten Lessons I Learned Answering the Sexual Assault Hotline and a
Britney Spears Single to Back Each One

I hope you’ll listen along as you read.

1. I do not know what is best for another person, ever.
   What am I to do with my life/ You will find it out don’t worry
   How am I supposed to know what’s right/ You just gotta do it your way
   I can’t help the way I feel/ Cause my life has been so overprotected
   
   Early in our training we discussed the idea of encouraging or discouraging callers from taking certain actions. When you take on a role of service and come into contact with someone in need, it’s tempting to mother them into any decision you think would serve them. But this is almost never the right choice. As a volunteer interacting with a caller for 10 to 15 minutes over the phone, I do not have the context of their* daily life, from financial agency to mental health, to advise them on life-changing decisions. My job is to first ascertain that the caller is not in immediate physical danger and then ensure that the caller is mentally calm enough to consider their options and resources.
   *Throughout this essay I use the pronoun “they” to connote that sexual assault is experienced by all genders.
   
   Since I am explaining the resources available to a caller, I have to actively present each choice neutrally. Some of the actions a person may take are: obtaining a physical exam from a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner, filing a report with the police, speaking with a professional counselor over the phone or in person (with the option of maintained anonymity), and joining a support group of other survivors. Or none of the above.
   
   In the training hours, volunteers are warned that it can be tempting to encourage survivors to report their assault to the police. We all want to see wrong-doers brought to justice, which begs the question: is it more important that a rapist be punished, or that the survivor is offered the best possible chance at health, happiness and recovery? Alway, always, always we must prioritize the self-assessed health needs of the survivor.
   

   
   
   

2. Even if they want me to know what is best for them.
   I don’t need permission/ make my own decisions
   That’s my prerogativeOccasionally callers will ask what I would do in their situation. I do not know what I would do in their situation. I’m not them. The correct answer to this question is a gentle “What do you think you should do?” or perhaps “Would you like to hear about some different options available to you right now?”

3. Because when power is stolen from a person, it is theirs to seize it back.
   You might think that I won’t make it on my own/ But now I’m stronger than yesterdayI do not mean that other people facing greater struggles than my own do not have my support. I do not mean “Every man is an island” (I think people that feel this way should go live on a tax-free island).

   I mean that a person who survives sexual assault also suvives the psychological trauma that is agency theft. You can be one person who returns their agency by refusing to make decisions on their behalf and reminding them their intincts are good. Sometimes all you can be is stronger than yesterday.

4. You don’t owe anyone mental health and surviving looks different for everyone.
   And everytime I try to fly/ I fall
   Without my wings/ I feel so small

    

   Survivors sometimes apologize for cyclical thoughts about worthlessness, feeling at fault or generally being distressed. They may also feel that they are not appropriately distressed if calmness comes abruptly. There’s no reaction to sexual assault that confirms or denies that the assault occured. We process trauma differently. You do not owe anyone happiness. You do not have to look at the bright side. Your healing may involve looking into darkness.

   Warning: in an official survey of me and my friends, the Everytime music video makes literally everyone cry every time.
   

5. A survivor may not report an assault for many reasons.
   Well get in line with the papparazzi/ Whose flippin me off
   Hopin I’ll resort to some havoc and end up settlin in court
   

   Now are you sure you want a piece of me?

   Here is just one:
   According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), “4 out 5 sexual assaults are commited by someone who knows the victim.*” An assault reported to the police is public record and may make local or national news. It’s considered bad form to expose the identity of the survivor (and it is illegal if the survivor is a minor), but it happens. Identity of the survivor can sometimes be inferred by the identity of the perpetrator. The baised coverage of 2012’s Stuebbenville High School rape case exposed the public outcry and stigma a survivor may face when police and media are involved. Members of the Stuebbenville community blamed the survivor for her rape and the ensuing consequences the perpetrators faced.
   *For obvious reasons, I prefer the term “survivor” to “victim.”

6. No action you can take entitles another person to your body without consent.
   It might seem like a crush/ but it doesn’t mean that I’m serious – This part should not be news, but in a culture rife with music, movies, and rhetoric encouraging (especially but not exclusively) men to ply women with alcohol or drugs for sex, it bares repeating.The lyrics to “Oops . . . I Did it Again” can have some disturbing implications. I think I did it again/ I made you belive we’re more than just friends/ I’m not that innocent suggests that flirting with someone entitles them to romance or sex. But I love to imagine the repeated Oops in the chorus as mocking this absurd and harmful idea.
   
7. One question that can be helpful when speaking to someone in crisis is “What normally helps you calm down or feel good?”This is a great way to remind folks that they already have coping mechanisms. Taking a walk, showering or watching Netflix  . . . whatever intuitively strikes a survivor as calming can offer liberty from flashbacks and cyclical trauma.I chose the 2004 Superbowl Pepsi commercial featuring Britney, P!nk and Beyonce to represent self-care, because watching them overthrow Enrique Iglesias (who obviously represents the patriarchy) with the power of song is self-care for me.
   

   
   

8. Language is important and choosing it carefully is not “oversensitive.”
   It’s in the air and it’s all aroundSince we collectively imbibe so much confusingly toxic culture all the time, it can be helpful to mirror language. When someone describes a situation as stressful, saying “That sounds stressful” is a great kindness. Likewise, introducing language a survivor is not ready to use can ostrasize the caller. Survivors are often fraught with shame, worried that they’re making a big deal out of something that was ultimately their fault. If they say “Something bad happened” and you respond with “So when you were raped,” they may shut down and stop seeking support. I repeat: they may shut down and stop seeking support. You are not babying anyone when you respect the parameters of recovery that they set up for themselves. On the contrary, you are conveying that you support their efforts to obtain help and you know that they and they alone know what is right for them.
   
9. Anyone who tells you that things are so much better than they used to be and you should feel grateful is wrong and stupid.
   If there’s nothing missing in her life
   Why do these tears come at night?The fact that women can vote in the United States does not make an individual’s trauma less painful. The fact that we have evolved as a society in some ways does not mean looking at our culture critically is futile or unnecessary.
   
10. If you’re angry, you’re paying attention.
    SCREAM
    AND SHOUT
    AND LET IT ALL OUT.