Will the real Slim Shady stand up?

I used to think that it was inevitable: as I got older I would become more conservative. It seems the opposite is happening. The longer I live the more I realize how my children have pushed me to become more open-minded. And I can't thank them enough.

When Eminem first became a household name my son was thirteen years old. I picked him up from camp one summer and he could recite all of the words to Eminem's "Without Me." I was appalled. Fast forward six years and I find myself defending Eminem's First Amendment rights in a Facebook discussion with a group of intelligent women who are all moms of young children. The women object to the the monster hit song " The Way You Lie."In it Eminem raps about an abusive relationship where the couple keep breaking up and getting back together. At one point the rapper threatens to tie his girlfriend to the bed and "set this house on fire" if she tries to leave again.

The chorus of "The Way You Lie" is sung by Rihanna, whose famous abuse at the hands of her ex-boyfriend Chris Brown makes her participation either very ironic or very stupid. I refuse to believe the latter. If anything, the fact that it incites controversy shows that the song may actually bring attention to the subject of abuse and afford an opportunity for parents to discuss it with their kids. Telling kids that the music is junk (or forbidden) and they shouldn't listen to it at all will send them straight to the Internet to download it. Anyway, isn't that what our parents told us about rock music in the 70's, including classics like Led Zeppelin and The Who?

If it's any consolation, my son the former Eminem fan, won't listen to Eminem anymore. "He's way too commercial now," he said recently. He will, however, listen to Beethoven and Led Zeppelin. They do grow up eventually, musically speaking, for the most part unscathed.

Holding Out for a Hero

There are very few women in popular culture these days that I would want my fifteen-year-old daughter to idolize. I know that Lady Gaga is making a statement about individuality, but does that always have to involve something see through that shows her breasts?

Fortunately, there are several young female characters running around in a book and a movie that I would call genuine role models, and perhaps even heroines. The first is a character named Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) in a film called Winter's Bone.

Visually, the movie is haunting, like a dark, rural painting where Andrew Wyeth meets Edward Hopper in the Ozarks. But more than the setting, the young girl at the center of the story is seventeen years old, responsible for her entire household, including two younger siblings and her mentally incapacitated mother, with absolutely no help from a missing, meth cooking father. Yet Ree is so determined and so capable that it's impossible for her to do anything but fight and survive. Any teenager who can teach her little brother to shoot a squirrel and cook it for supper has my vote for the MTV movie awards' "Bravest Film Chick" of the Year (new category).

The literary heroines that I want my daughter to idolize are the three women in the novel The Help, set in 1960's Jackson, Mississippi. One privileged young white woman and two black maids set out to write a book within a book describing what it is like to be "the help" in a white home in the pre-civil rights south. The three characters are very different, but all three risk everything they have for a cause they believe in. They have so much pride and determination and love of family and justice, that I would make this book a mandatory read in every tenth grade classroom across the country. And it's historical fiction so it goes down a lot smoother than a history text book.

Here's to role models for young women, real or imagined.