#57: Considering My Crushes – No. 03

Remembering my adolescence and young womanhood where I crushed on anything and everything that had a pulse

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[Image description: Text ‘Considering My Crushes No. 03’ on a lilac background]

The ‘Considering My Crushes’ content strand is a space where writers in my community – myself included – think about our fruity memories and fantasies from back in the day.

I began the series by going back to the mid/late 90s, to describe my first crushes who were Peter Pan, Damon Albarn, Billy Kennedy, Ernst Robinson and US President Bill Clinton. (link to essay here: ‘#40: Considering My Crushes – No. 01’). And then I wrote about my early 00s crushes on Sirius Black and Kingsley Shacklebolt from Harry Potter and Harvey, Romeo and Asher D from So Solid Crew (link to essay here: ‘#46: Considering My Crushes – No. 02’).

Now, I’m picking things up during my pubescent years, when I was a bundle of raging hormones with a capacity to feel desire so viscerally that I’d often scream into my pillow at night, my body all riled up and tense with an abundance of sexual energy that I didn’t know how to satiate. I mean, yes, I’d masturbate but what I was desperate to do, was to share some kind of sexually charged experience with someone else.

My teens during the noughties were spent hanging out with friends – who were well-off enough to have a Sky box at home – flipping through music channels like MTV, Scuzz, Kerrang TV! and The Box, for hours on end, gorging ourselves on Pop, Rock and Hip-hop stars. And this era massively ramped up the sexualisation of most of its mainstream music stars. This trend didn’t just shape how music videos looked – it also moulded the sexual desires of the millions of people watching music videos, especially my Millennial generation who were coming of age during this time.

During this era, I kept journals and scrapbooks where I’d write lengthy lists of crushes and cut-out pics of actors (mainly the model-esque, multi-ethnic casts of US TV shows like ‘E.R.’, ‘House M.D.’, ‘Lost’ and ‘Grey’s Anatomy’), TV presenters (Reggie Yates, Richard Hammond who were regularly on the BBC around this time) and a multitude of media-darling popstars.

My daydreams would often follow the narratives that appeared over and over again in the music videos of female pop singers; the ones where Britney Spears/Christina Aguilera /Shakira/Beyoncé/J-Lo/ Pussycat Dolls/Mis-Teeq/Rihanna performed a sexy dance routine and then seduced the hot guy model. Teens like me enthusiastically learned a kinetic vocabulary of dance moves (such as the ‘Crazy-in-Love-booty-twerk’, the ‘slutdrop’ and ‘whinin’ our waists), and sneaked into nightclubs long before we were legally permitted to be there so that we could experience something a little similar to the scenarios that we’d been consuming so often on the TV.

I also was very aware of how someone’s voice could activate desirous feelings in my body. In one journal, I’ve written:

Rupert Everett, Alan Rickman, the guy who raps in the Michael Jackson song ‘Black or White, Matt Bellamy’s singing voice, Gorillaz rapper, Dylan from Bodyrockers in ‘I like the Way’ song, Adam Yauch from Beasties Boys’ rap verses in ‘Ch-check It Out’, Timbaland, Ying-Yang twins whispering filth […]

And my collages looked very much like this:

[Image description: Digital collage of some of Almaz’s teen crushes. Clockwise: Justin Timberlake, Ciara, Pharrell Williams, Amerie, Tyson Ritter, Dr Greg Pratt, Dr Luka Kovač, Alex Band, Josh Homme, Nelly, Dr Greg House]

There were plenty of real-life infatuations too… That married barber who’d shamelessly flirt with me, all those Sheffield music scene folk I gigged with […]

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Portfolio Showcase

Sharing some of my copywriting, journalism, anti-racism and DEI work.

I’ve been working as a contractor on DEI and anti-racism projects via strategy agencies Utopia and Brand By Me (where I’m Content Lead), doing a mixture of copywriting, ghostwriting and content strategy work for blogs, newsletters and toolkits for brands like Ramblers and Pret.

Here’s a peek at the ‘Multicultural Allyship Toolkit’ for Pret that I just finished working on.

If your workplace is trying to become more inclusive and equitable and is looking for new strategies to make real and lasting changes get in touch.

Here in the UK, October is Black History Month (BHM), so I’m re-upping some of my BHM-commissioned work.

Feature for British Vogue: ‘What My Grandparents’ Wartime Meet Cute Teaches Us About Black British History’

“During the autumn of 1942, a convoy of ships bringing promising students from Britain’s West African colonies to the University of Cambridge made a perilous journey. Dodging enemy torpedoes, the convoy finally made berth, and everyone on board disembarked safely. One of the students was called Michael, and he was enrolled on the medical school course at Cambridge. He would go on to become my maternal grandfather. 

“Meanwhile, a 20-year-old London lass called Barbara Marian Bain – my maternal grandmother – was in her second year of reading English that particular autumn. She spotted Michael one Sunday at the Wesley Methodist Church on campus.”

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As part of a Black History Month assembly series at Wingfield Academy in Rotherham, UK, I did an online presentation for the students which included parts of the above personal essay.

Feel free to reach out if you’d like to book me for a talk or panel event.

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Feature for Byline Times: ‘Rebalancing the History Books: Why Learning About Colonialism Matters’

‘One of the Sewell report’s recommendations was the ‘Making of Modern Britain’ teaching resource, which “looks at the influence of the UK, particularly during the Empire period”. The report said that it wanted to see “how Britishness influenced the Commonwealth and local communities, and how the Commonwealth and local communities influenced what we now know as modern Britain”. Yet, on further investigation, these materials are only available as a companion to the AQA ‘A’ Level history syllabus.’

“‘One of the facts I feel was repeated to me constantly was how Thomas Edison invented the light bulb,” Jikiemi-Pearson says. “And it would be so easy to tell children about Lewis Latimer’s contribution, as he invented the carbon filament that was used in the light bulb. And to mention James Edward Maceo West, who co-invented the microphone, in the same breath as Alexander Graham Bell. Mary Seacole is starting to get the recognition she deserves, but she should be on the level of Florence Nightingale by now in terms of children knowing her story.”’

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I’m Almaz Ohene, a Creative Copywriter, Freelance Journalist and Accidental Sexpert.