“I’m so sick of our energy
With you I’m not really me”
From “Sleeping With The Enemy” by Butcher Babies
It’s been over 30 years since the world delighted in the movie Dirty Dancing (1987). Perhaps the most epic scene was the final dance number, in which the late Patrick Swayze’s character Johnny invited Jennifer Grey’s character, Baby, onstage, declaring to her father, “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.” It was a moment of empowerment, where Johnny and Baby broke free from the conventional norms and traditions to publicly declare their love and win over the hearts of everyone with their dancing. We ALL had the time of our life. The crowds cheered and the masses swooned, and many of us imagined who we could be if we opened ourselves up to new ideas and if the people around us supported our dreams.
And yet here we are decades later and we still can’t help but put people in corners. It is unfortunate that we can’t seem to pass up an opportunity to discriminate. Bias based on race, sex, sexuality, age, religion – you name it – we’ve still got it. And we can watch all of the feel-good movies we want, but after the closing credits, we go back to destroying dreams and crushing lives with myopic, narrow-minded thinking.
Well, two Babies that would not be put in a corner were Heidi Shepherd and Carla Harvey of the heavy metal band Butcher Babies. In fact, in talking with them for The Hardcore Humanism Podcast, their enduring bond was forged in the fire of wanting to break free from the limits and judgments that were put on them.
Shepherd grew up in a Mormon family. And as an adult, Shepherd took a position as a broadcaster for Playboy radio, which made her feel shunned by her community. “I worked for a company that my family didn’t approve of, my neighbors didn’t approve of. And it was Playboy. I didn’t pose for Playboy, I just was on their morning show for the radio station,” Shepherd told me. “Well, you fast forward all these years later, one of my brothers moved to Los Angeles, he moved in with me and one of our neighbors told my brother, ‘Well, don’t end up like your sister out there.’ And, you know, for me, I grew up in a Mormon household, that’s not a part of my life anymore. It hasn’t been for 15, 20 years at this point. But it really made me think like, what did I do that was so wrong for these people to say something like that to my baby brother? And I’ve been successful, but you know, in the eyes of them, I am a mess still.”
Shepherd was not only undeterred, but also doubled down on her desire to achieve success. “And it’s like I’ve played in front of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people, I’ve released so much music over the last 10 years, and they’re still saying stuff like that,” Shepherd said. “It’s something that I’ve had to deal with my whole life even still. But you know, back in the day, I think that type of attitude towards me, really lit a fire under my *ss to do something big.”
Across the country in Detroit, Carla Harvey was on a similar path. After experiencing bias because she was biracial, Harvey found herself dead set on overcoming discrimination. “We’ve seen how much racial tension still exists in our society. So, you know, if you think back to 30 years ago, imagine how I was treated as a biracial kid when there were no biracial kids around. And I remember the first time someone actually told me that I was biracial. Because I didn’t think about it. It was just my family,” Harvey recalled. “But I was in school and was the first time I had another little friend come to my house, and my dad came home from work. And this little girl looked at my dad and she said, ‘Your dad is black.’ And I was like, ‘What? What do you mean, my dad’s black?’ you know, it just it never occurred to me.
“And it seems like things changed then. Like it was suddenly people were aware of different things, to different race and people being different in school. And so that started and people wanted me to pick a side, almost, which was if you if I was going to be black, I couldn’t like rock and roll. I couldn’t talk a certain way. I had to prove my blackness, which is silly. But then, you know, if I was around white people, they would say, ‘Well, you’re not really black. You’re not really like them, you’re not like that. You’re you have light skin, so it’s fine.’ And it’s like, no, it’s not fine… it to be young and have those feelings. It’s very confusing… And I was dealing with all of those emotions, you know, during puberty, and I just felt very alone. And I had a plan in my head that I even wrote in my diary when I was very young. I hate everyone here. I don’t care if they don’t like me, I’m going to move to LA and be a rock star,” Harvey described. “But much like Heidi said, when you feel that way, when you feel like the world is against you, and you have nothing, and you want to get back at everybody… one of the ways that you want to do that is by becoming something bigger than yourself, and just show them and throw it in their face. Like ‘See, you doubted me, and this is what I became.’”
Harvey and Shepherd met when they played in a punk rock cover band together and bonded over their mutual love of Wendy O. Williams of Plasmatics. In addition to Plasmatics’ great music, Williams was known for her raunchy and incendiary live shows in which she would often appear onstage mostly naked. Williams defined the defiant, independent attitude that Shepherd and Harvey felt when they faced obstacles on their journey. And they eventually decided to form Butcher Babies, inspired by the song “Butcher Baby” by Plasmatics.
“I was so drawn to her attitude, and how she kind of took the reins in her career and said, ‘Don’t tell me what to dress like, Don’t tell me what to look like, I’m going to do what I want to do.’ And of course, that was something that was very inspirational for me.,” Shepherd explained. “And then as I found out, I became a huge fan, and went down the rabbit hole of, of Wendy O. – what she stood for what she did and the ground that she broke. And both of us, as we became friends, kind of discussed how she had been such a huge impact on our careers, because she paved the way for females like us to go in and f*ck sh*t up. And I think that that was where the love for Wendy came along. We’ve been trying to fly her flag ever since.”
To be sure, Williams was part of a punk rock cohort that included other legendary artists such as Iggy Pop and GG Allin who were well known for similar nudity and provocation. And yet there seemed to be a clear bias whereby women were more harshly judged for this artistic expression. “We always say, ‘But there’s men up there who are, you know, thrusting their pelvises and shirtless and sweaty … They’re drug addicts and [they] display infidelity … And they’re cheating on everybody and they have a ton of girlfriends and there’s a line of girls out the bus…,’” Shepherd said. “But when it’s women, it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s just crazy.’”
“And fast forward 10 years, there’s so many more females in metal…it’s pretty cool. Because, you know, as time has gone on, regardless of what people have said about where we started and how we started, seeing the movement and seeing and speaking to all these different females in the industry now who…look up to us in a way – which is so weird to me…,” Shepherd said. “So, that’s a really cool thing for me to feel like, we did knock down some walls that were placed in front of us for decades.”
Most recently, they’ve enjoyed seeing other artists such as Miley Cyrus pay homage to Williams. And they know they’ve been part of what’s kept the spirit of Williams and Plasmatics alive. “I sent Heidi a photo over the weekend of Miley Cyrus wearing a Wendy O t-shirt on stage in a live stream,” Harvey said. “And then she’s also on the cover of Rolling Stone with her boobs out and her tongue out like that. And I laughed and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, we’ve been flying this flag for a decade.’”
Who knows? Some day we might actually learn from the example of artists like Shepherd and Harvey, and stop putting Baby in a corner.
Photo credit: DJ Imagery
