Proclaiming motherhood part 2

So...last week I quickly dashed over to the rec center for a run before I took up the duties of caring for my father. I hopped on a tread mill (I usually prefer the track for lack of tv) and found it hard to ignore the Rachael Ray show just off to the side of my machine. Rachael, America's currently hip homemaking queen, was interviewing Shakira, the hot-to-trot Columbian singer sensation who was promoting a philosophy of motherhood outside the box. (Children first and then we'll see about marriage.) "Times are changing," Shakira said. (I believe Bob Dylan got there first.) Quoting her recent interview in Rolling Stone Magazine she professed her great desire to produce children - a worthy endeavor to say the least! I'm definitely in favor of motherhood, but I believe children and marriage should be linked.

I'm also more than a little mystified by this combination of motherhood and embracing "our true wishes and desires - our primal natures" professed and extolled in the interview and exemplified by Shakira's music and performance. While I admire her humanitarian work with children in poverty, and her congenial personality, I don't find her portfolio a desirable role model for the up and coming generation. She views herself as a "good girl." Just what does that mean? Anything in the name of art or perhaps $$? I'm just as amazed by Madonna's protective claim that she did not allow her young children to watch tv, all the while producing quite unsavory fair for everyone else's children to consume. It's hard to criticize someone for fighting poverty or promoting motherhood, but what do you do when they combine that with other destructive influences?

I was even more unsettled by the whole-hearted acceptance by middle American women of all ages in the Rachael Ray audience who wildly applauded what I thought was a fairly carnal and pornographic dvd clip of Shakira's latest release She-Wolf. "Hot-hot-hot" was Rachael Ray's comment. I wonder how many preschoolers whose mothers were tuned in caught a view of Shakira in her very un-motherly gyrations and attire (or lack thereof). It seems we live in a time where anything, however destructive to the moral fabric of our society, dressed up and promoted by the time honored institutions of fame and fortune becomes main stream. What are we thinking?