I didn’t mean to black out on my 13-year-old this past weekend. It’s just that when we drove past Club Onyx, the infamous Atlanta strip club that, according to practically every rap song ever made in the history of rap songs, is the star attraction of big booty, p-popping guhls of the South, my darling daughter made my head Exorcist spin when she shared this golden nugget: “I heard it’s nice in there.”
I ’clare fo’ Sweet Baby Jesus in the Manger, I heard needles scratch-dancing across vinyl 33s and cars crashing and airplanes dropping out of the sky. The hubs got mad quiet. I’m sure the steam seeping from my brain and out of my ears singed the girlpie’s baby hairs. Within seconds, the wrath commenced: “It’s nice in there? Nice? In the strip club?” I demanded. “For who?”
Baby girl knew she’d stepped on a landmine. My hatred of strip clubs and their glorification in hip-hop and R&B music and reality shows like Love & Hip Hop Atlanta and The Real Housewives of Atlanta is well documented in my house. Any time a rapper brags on tossing “racks on racks on racks” at naked girls or RHOA’s Phaedra starts extolling the virtues of strippers “shaved up pretty,” I either roll my eyes, have a conniption or turn the radio/TV all the way off, with a few choice curse words under my breath to boot, for their glorification sans context. Clearly, though, I’ve fallen down on my job if my 13-year-old is of the mindset that any establishment where women get naked for the chump change and amusement of strangers is “nice.”
