Most people who knew me in high school only knew me for one thing: I loved Prince. I dressed like Prince. I wore my hair over my eye like Prince. I wore clothes with Prince’s face on it. Maybe in some corners of the world, this isn’t so rare. But in small town east Tennessee in the late 1980s, I was the only one openly obsessed with the Purple One. Very few of my peers even knew anything about the real Prince. As it turns out, neither did I.
My feelings for Prince have changed over the years. But inside me there is a brokenhearted teenage girl, sad not only for the death of her idol, but also because the “Beautiful Ones” really do smash the pictures. He was an amazing musician with an intoxicating, beautiful body & style; but he was not so kind to the women in his life. I wish he had lived long enough for me to reconcile this ambivalence I hold for him in my mind. But as it is now, I feel like I am mourning a dream I once I had, a very colorful and exhilarating dream.
“Paint a perfect picture
Bring to life
The vision in ones mind
The Beautiful ones
Always smash the picture
Always every time”
lyrics from “The Beautiful Ones” – Prince
Julie Roberts Towe 