Page Six reports a little clue that maybe Amy Winehouse isn’t as manically insane as she perhaps appears. Prior to the Grammys, which she wasn’t allowed to attend because the US Consulate in the UK considered her too much of a liability to issue her with a visa, she managed to clean up her act enough to sing coherently by staying clean long enough to remember the words and how to pronounce them with both consonants and vowels.
However, sitting out a dance with Sweet Lady H wasn’t all Winehouse did to ensure a more or less marketable performance for the Grammys. She was also asked to cover up a tattoo she has on her arm of a topless woman so she just drew a bra on her the figure with makeup or a black pen or something and then went on TV.
The Telegraph in the UK is quoted as reporting:
"Amy drew a little black bikini top on the large topless female tattoo on her arm," I'm told, "so as not to offend any of America's more puritanical viewers. After the show, the makeshift top was washed off."
America’s puritanical sensibilities are hilarious. Winehouse’s unhinged, drug addled antics are relentlessly covered in the media in the US and even though Winehouse is a soulful artist in a sea of corporately constructed pop music products, the fact that she won 5 Grammys this year has got to have been at least in part because of her off the rails behavior and constant media exposure. Whether America likes it or not, her persona lends her music a certain authenticity even if parts of that cultural resonance are steeped in irony.
Plus, the reality is, Americans tuning in to the Grammys who are the kind that would be offended at something like that are just self flagellating moralists who probably enjoy and need a good sexualized beating every now and then anyway.
Seriously, writing about America’s double standard when it comes to sex and violence is so repetitive I’m actually wondering if I should have bothered. [source]
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