1988: Hangin’ Tough, New Kids on the Block
by Jan Saenz
In first grade, I got in trouble for wearing a bra to school. I had tied the straps in a quadruple knot behind my back to fit, so I guess my teacher noticed my new dorsal fin—a horn shrouded beneath a thin cotton NKOTB nightgown I was passing off as a T-shirt. I had spent the night before practicing French kissing a wooden bedpost. I had shaved my legs and arms in secret. I had to grow up fast, you see, had to do everything possible to manifest the chance that one day I would come home from school and see Donnie, Joey, Danny, Jordan, and Jonathan waiting for me at my bus stop, waiting to hug me and pet me, to take turns hoisting me above their shoulders. I fantasized about the whole neighborhood witnessing the mind-blowing discovery that I knew NKOTB intimately, that these five hot, talented men were my boyfriend-daddies, sweeping their little girl off her feet and ushering her home after school. I was 6, and TV was my babysitter.
Back then, I perceived music as a visual thing. In my house, music came from movies. Cindy Lauper came from The Goonies and Girls Just Want to Have Fun. Doo-wop came from Little Shop of Horrors. I wasn’t introduced to Little Richard through a record; I met him through a self-recorded VHS copy of Disney’s Mother Goose Rock n Rhyme. Cassettes, records, car radios—these were not mediums I cut my teeth on. I teethed on television remotes. I stacked VHS tapes like Playskool blocks, arranging them beneath our box television like offerings to a shrine. I knew how to work a VCR before I knew how to write my own name.
I absorbed Hangin’ Tough not through a cassette but through two VHS tapes: New Kids on the Block: Hangin’ Tough and Hangin’ Tough Live. The former was a compilation of music videos and documentary footage, while the latter offered the viewer a live concert-format experience.
In the years those VHS tapes lived on top of our living room television, my sisters and I were growing up fast and feral in seedy neighborhoods. We didn’t have money, but we didn’t know that. All we knew was Whataburger was for rich people and underwear was a shared property. Mom sold Mary Kay and Dad worked long hours. When Dad was home, he slept, but that was ok—I found fun ways to hang out with him. During his naps, I would play “drive-thru” on my tricycle around his work truck, ordering at the car window, then circling around to the back bumper. Hit the red tail light for ketchup. Hit the white tail light for no onions. I’d go through his wallet. Collect my Barbies in his boots. I am told our rent house was small, but what I remember was a massive wolf’s den—a dark walnut exterior with wild honeysuckle growing up the side. Darkness was a gentle presence inside our home, a soothing contrast to the high Houstonian sun that freckled my face. Lights were kept off to save electricity, and I was a pup walking through that familiar darkness. A pup inside a cavernous entryway; inside a sunken living room; inside windowless passages—a hallway that seemed to shrink in on itself, and at its end, an eerie vacant silence that lived in my parents’ bedroom.
The collective thesis of Hangin’ Tough was clear: a guy loves a girl unconditionally. It was my first exposure to a full album experience—a consecutive, start-to-finish collective of multiple songs from the same artist. It was also my first palpable memory of feeling seen and adored by male energy.
Hangin’ Tough Live opens with “My Favorite Girl,” offering the first impression that this concert experience is a love letter to their favorite girl: you. You are their favorite girl. A small sea of girls and young women scream and cheer for the five members dancing before them, each with their signature persona, a role they must play. These personas act as a marketing tactic, allowing fans to choose which boy they feel is their type. Jordan is the popular boy. Joey is the sweet boy. Donnie is the bad boy. Jonathan is the quiet boy. Danny is . . . something. These roles are further accentuated through wardrobe images: Jordan’s Batman jacket, Joey’s happy face T-shirt, Donnie’s leather jacket and peace sign pendant dangling over a bold message printed across his chest. LOVER BOY.
The messages of these songs stirred a dormant, deep-rooted, unattended need that lived inside me. “Wha’cha Gonna Do (About It)” echoed a sentiment I didn’t understand then but do now: I never stood a chance against boys like these. For me, the lyrics “sooner or later / love is gonna getcha” foreshadowed my premature sexual awakening, followed by a more menacing question: “Wha’cha gonna do about it?” The song “Please Don’t Go Girl” awoke my desire to feel special and needed by a man. “You’re my best friend / You’re my love within / I just want you to know / that I will always love you.” The lyrics are composed of simple language, rudimentary rhymes, and repetition of an obscene degree, much like a children’s song. Throughout the song, the words girl and you are repeated in nearly every line. As a young spectator, this repetition was powerful and effective. That girl was me. I was the girl they sang to. I was his girl. And his. And his. During “Cover Girl,” Donnie pulls a preadolescent girl up on stage (someone I would later research and find to be named Jenny). Entranced, Jenny holds Donnie’s hand and dances side-to-side like a daughter might dance with her father in public, rigid and somewhat bashful. Before she leaves, Donnie caresses her cheek, leans forward, and kisses her face. Today, viewers might call his actions creepy or mildly inappropriate. Back then, I called it dreamy. For me, the message was hope. I looked just like Jenny.
Throughout the recording, the predominantly female audience is encouraged to clap, to sing along, to wave their arms, to always be in sync with the boys onstage. The concert closes with the album’s title song, “Hangin’ Tough,” a message about being aggressively unyielding. Mission accomplished, boys. The last thing Jordan shouts to the crowd is laughably parental, but perhaps something my father would have said: “Say no to drugs.”
Why did I feel so hypnotically directed by these messages? Surely I had some degree of desensitization toward male attention. Surely my dad told me he loved me. My parents were married, my father was around. I just have no memory of him being around. Ever. Is this because he didn’t speak to me, or was it because I was always in close proximity to a television? Did boy bands steal my attention away from my father?
They say daddy issues are born out of one’s innate need for male love, support, and approval that wasn’t received in childhood. Like driving a car with a broken speedometer, a person with daddy issues doesn’t know how to gauge or respond to male support in a way that is appropriate and proportionate to their age. Understand, having daddy issues does not equate to having a bad father. My father was a good man; he worked hard to provide for his family. I do not fault him for his absence. Perhaps NKOTB said loving things my father would have said had he been a different type of man, a different type of boy band member. When you’re young, all love feels the same, and in retrospect, I didn’t love NKOTB songs so much as I loved what their songs represented—the prospect of male attention. Six-year-old me wanted the master key to that attention, believing it would unlock a secret happiness I knew existed but did not access.
So, why did I feel “sexy” was the answer? Why did I think wearing a bra, shaving my limbs, and practicing kissing on a bedpost would summon NKOTB to my bus stop? All Jenny did was hold Donnie’s hand and dance back and forth. Hangin’ Tough was about loving a girl—caring for her, missing her. The sexuality was there—the occasional pelvic thrust in a dance move—but the overall NKOTB message was sweet, even gentlemanly. They were never filmed kissing girls in music videos. So, what else was playing on TV in ‘88 and ‘89?
Paula Abdul—ah! I was obsessed with the animated music video for “Opposites Attract,” transfixed by the fosse-inspired orgy-dance in “Cold-Hearted Snake.” How many times did I watch Madonna seduce her audience, splayed out naked on a bed in “Express Yourself,” kissing a saint in “Like a Prayer”? How many times did I watch Baby in Dirty Dancing or Jessica Rabbit in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? In The Little Mermaid, Ariel’s salvation is dependent on winning a man’s love—his kiss—while simultaneously wanting her father’s approval. Ariel wore a bra. Madonna and Baby wore a bra. My 6-year-old brain received these collective messages loud and clear. Bra + kissing = reward. (Interesting fact: Teenage pregnancy reached its height in the 1960s. The next major surge? 1990, around the same time I was discerning my equation.)
Was that scuffed-up copy of Hangin’ Tough Live to blame for my premature sexual awakening, my dormant daddy issues come to life? Probably not. But a 90s girl has to wonder: what kind of girl would I be if boy bands hadn’t raised me?
Jan Saenz is a writer, editor, and educator. Her work has been described as "funny, horrific, and smart," appearing in Paper Darts, HAD, Jellyfish Review, and more. She teaches creative writing at Kinder HSPVA and lives with her family in Northwest Houston. She is currently working on a new novel and first collection of poems.