The Real Meaning Behind Cyndi Lauper’s Saucy Self-Love Serenade, “She Bop”

While there have been a number of songs over the last three decades about female self-love—from Divinyls’ “I Touch Myself” to Hailee Steinfeld’s “Love Myself”—someone had to pave the way (make the bed?) for the topic to have more widespread acceptance. Flashback to Cyndi Lauper’s 1983 album She’s So Unusual, and its third single, “She Bop.” While the average kid back then had no idea what the song was about, many adults did. Indeed, the hit later drew the ire of future Second Lady Tipper Gore and the the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC).

Saucy Inspiration

But first things first. While she was recording her debut solo album, former Blue Angel vocalist Cyndi Lauper got a half-drunken phone call from songwriter Stephen Broughton Lunt (one of her collaborators on the track) suggesting she should write a song about female masturbation. Women didn’t have a song like that back then, he mused—certainly not in mainstream pop, anyway. Interested in the idea, she had him go with her to the magazine store below the studio to find a female magazine to reference.

“There was Playgirl, but that was kind of boring,” Lauper said in an interview on her Vevo channel. “And then there was Blue Boy, which at that time, in my ignorance, I thought it was a woman’s magazine. It was not, but that’s why in [the song I sing], ‘Well, I see him every night in tight blue jeans’ [like the men in the magazine]. I tried to take a real life and put it into the song.”

Quirky Instrumentation

Lauper wanted to mix rockabilly with electronic music. She achieved the former in the vocal style and the latter with the keyboard sounds in the song. Lauper already commanded a distinctly quirky vocal style, so “She Bop” immediately took on a special life of its own.

Lyrically, she made certain references that would be oblique to kids but more obvious to adults. Of course, many parents probably paid little attention to them.

Do I wanna go out with a lion’s roar?
Yeah, I wanna go South and get me some more
Hey, they say that a stitch in time saves nine
They say I better stop or I’ll go blind
Oop, she bop, she bop

There were references to “she bop, he bop, we bop, I bop, you bop, they bop” to stress the universality of the song’s onanistic focus. Although the ‘80s were certainly wilder than the ‘50s, which the video references, the lyrics were racy and playful but just vague enough to avoid widespread detection. Or so Lauper thought.

“She Bop” Video Meaning

The video for “She Bop” played on a lot of those ideas as Lauper, steaming up her car while ogling “Beefcake” magazine, then meets a macho biker at a ‘50s-style Burger Klone restaurant. She goes on a fast ride with him while they are pursued in a military jeep by S.W.A.T.: Suburban Wives Against Transgressors. The duo stop for “Self Service” at a “Fill ‘Er Up” station, and she gets arrested for an undisclosed “crime.” The video closes with the singer and biker, now dressed up in white coat and tails, doing a song-and-dance number in dark glasses…since they’ve gone blind.

[RELATED: Cyndi Lauper’s Debut ‘She’s So Unusual’ Turns 40, Previously Unseen Images by Photographer Annie Leibovitz Revealed]

The video was clearly a nudge and wink to adults, parents, and savvy teens who got the joke. However, the Gore-led PMRC wasn’t laughing. They viewed “She Bop” as obscene and vulgar, right along with infamous songs like metal band W.A.S.P.’s “Aniaml (F— Like a Beast).” Ironically, the video’s S.W.A.T. joke was prophetic in terms of the PMRC’s reaction to her song.

In an Instagram post from July 2021, Lauper explained, “Most people didn’t get what ‘She Bop’ was about until much later, when I went on [’80s celebrity sex therapist] Dr. Ruth’s radio show. I was playing along with her, making believe I was in a psychiatrist’s office, but then everything I said was blown up later by the press.

“Suddenly #SheBop was on the Parents’ Music Resource Center’s #FilthyFifteen list of songs that they said should be banned, like ‘Let Me Put My Love Into You’ by AC/DC. I was so mad, because I had made sure that I never mentioned certain things so that little kids would never know. And then I was found out because of my big mouth. Now every kid knew what it was about, and it wasn’t supposed to be that way. Oh, c’est la vie. That’s French for ‘whatever.’” 

Gratification Nation

In the end, Lauper’s role in the PMRC controversy faded fast. And her catchy song about a certain style of self-gratification remains one of her most memorable tunes. It’s topped 25 million views on YouTube and 21 million plays on Spotify as of this writing, and can still elicit chuckles from those who may remember not knowing what it was about back then.

Funnily enough, Hailee Steinfeld’s song “Love Myself,” and a video in which she wears a “Self Service” t-shirt, was also misinterpreted by many young fans as being about empowerment of a more general sort. As KISS’ Paul Stanley once sang, “It ain’t a crime to be good to yourself.”

Photo by David Redfern/Redferns