Zumba in northern Wisconsin already seems so out of place. Salsa, Merengue and cheese curds don’t appear to co-exist, but that is my own narrow view of how this area of woods and lakes should look. I have overlooked how widely the world of music and pop culture can spread.

As a teen vacationing in Wisconsin we would try late at night to have our transistor radios pick up WLS in Chicago, so we could feel that connection to home, city and music. But the world is a smaller place now and kids up here can be working on their family farm, driving the tractor, headphones on and cranking up the same tunes as city teens riding on the CTA.

But this strange coexistence became more apparent to me as I was twirling the wrong way in my Zumba class in Shell Lake, Wisconsin. This town of 1,329 people sits on the shore of a big round lake shaped like, what else, a seashell. It has a tiny lake hotel and bar and is the Washburn county seat, and just outside of town is a pole barn that has been built for the town health club. It is new, corrugated steel, and clean, and the view from the windows is a lovely field and Auctions 4U, where farm families bid farewell to their belongings.

I’m waiting for the music to begin, stretching and looking in the mirrors that reflect back the women around me wearing the usual black leggings and  bright colored athletic tops. We begin with a few salsa-type dances, and then a song comes on that I know from the art room at Oak Park and River Forest High School, an artist named Jason Derulo is singing Talk Dirty to Me.

 

Been around the world, don’t speak the language

But your booty don’t need explaining

All I really need to understand is

When you talk dirty to me

 

I can’t believe I know these lyrics and I’m dancing and trying to follow our teacher who has some great hip hop moves for us, but I’m experiencing a weird disconnect. As I look out the window onto this pastoral vista in this tiny lake town, I think about how we are all dancing to moves that I envision in an urban setting. But perhaps more unsettling for me is how I’m distracted by the music and the dancing and not paying attention to the lyrics, which is common says a music psychologist, Dr. Victoria Williams. We are less troubled by misogynistic lyrics when we are not reading them, but dancing and singing.

 

What! I consider myself a feminist. I went to see Betty Friedan trounce all over Phyllis Schlafly, and I tore up my daughters’ copy of Cosmopolitan magazine in a rant about female body image. My mom and grandma taught me to be a self-reliant girl who had her own checkbook.

 

I don’t like the lyrics, but I do like the beat and the way it makes you want to dance to the music. There are of course bigger social issues here about why these lyrics, and who wrote them. But I believe there are some reasons we respond to certain art forms that can be difficult to explain. And for today, in Shell Lake Wisconsin,  I’m grateful for the smallness of the world and I’m having a great time dancing to this song.