I was a young white guy once, so I’ve seen first-hand how it can be difficult for other young white guys to grasp concepts outside of the young white guy bubble. When your “cultural experience” consists of crushing some natty with your dudebros and talking about murdering your babe’s vagina, it’s understandable that you become less sensitive.
In a way, that’s what makes growing up so great; when you’re older, you have experience that teaches you how to treat other people and respect your fellow members of society. Perhaps, if you’re so motivated, you might even go out and try to elicit some change in the world as an adult, feeling that sentiment to leave the world a better place.
Not everyone grows up, though, and some dudebros age physically without developing a scrap of mental or emotional clairvoyance. Most of these guys get middle-management jobs and have no impact on the world, but an occasional meathead falls up through the cracks and gets a platform for their views.
The latest to reach the major league level of assholery is Robin Thicke, with his vapid and abhorrent song ‘Blurred Lines.’ Accompanied by Pharrell Williams, who seems intent on being the sidekick to his own summer, and T.I., rapper/maker of overpriced calculators, Thicke turns the sleaze up and writes four (or five) minutes of come-ons and coercive propositions. It’s a giant rape threat, as Thicke repeats “I know you want it” over and over and over, sounding like the drunk guy at the bar who is one step away from drugging the girl’s drink. T.I. skips the nuance and explains that he’ll “give you something big enough to tear your ass in two.” (Gee, I wonder if he means his penis.) “What rhymes with ‘hug me’?” I dunno, but any woman with self-respect ought to want to slug you in the face by this point.
The video is even worse, with scantily clad (or nude) models dancing around as the fully-dressed (in K-Mart suits?) guys bump and grind up against them. Williams carries a banjo, because I guess his audition for Mumford and Sons’ ‘Hopeless Wanderer’ video was the same day and/or he is a psychopath. Hashtags are blasted over the visuals, which look like it was run through a bad Instagram filter.
The song and video stirred a lot of discussion, and authors universally saw the video what it was for: lowbrow, misogynist drivel that exploits sexuality and implicit rape threats to get YouTube hits and easy money. This hasn’t stopped it from reaching the top of the Billboard 100, but in a world where George W. Bush was re-elected by 62 million people in 2004, this isn’t very surprising.
Most people in a situation like this try to feign some empathy with critics. Thicke did not. Talking with GQ Magazine in May, he sarcastically commented that it was a “pleasure… to degrade a woman.” A sane adult might stop there, but good luck convincing a dudebro to lay off! The guys he balls with in his YMCA rec league might call him a pussy, and nothing hurts an adult worse than middle school insults.
After even more criticism, an adult might step back and look at their actions. You’re looking at the wrong guy to do anything like that. “It’s saying that men and women are equals as animals and as power,” Thicke asserts. Then explain scantily dressed models and fully dressed men. Better yet, where are the ladies singing “I know you want it?” Get a verse from Rihanna, or Katy Perry, or even Lana Del Ray if you’re desperate. Instead, we’re one step removed from a guest verse by Ben Roethlisberger.
One of the more appalling defenses offered by Thicke is that the song and video are a ‘celebration’ of women. But in Thicke’s world, there’s only one type of woman: shy, with a rape fantasy, and 5% body fat. If you’re going to stoop to objectifying women with any sincerity, you have to recognize that not all women look like supermodels. To exclude any variety of body type—age, weight, height, creed, color—is to miss the point, and Thicke does so wildly.
With the amount of misogyny present, I can’t imagine any women with the least bit of self-respect enjoying the song. To have a person randomly assert that YOU want to be raped by THEM because of your looks goes against any celebration of women or notion of power equality. Women who enjoy the song in spite of the flaws are tragic figures, who feed into the cultural notion that women ought to be subservient to men, lacking in opinions or assertiveness, and accepting of judgments of their physical beauty as kindness and compliment instead of the pervy sexism that those comments truly are.
(I don’t think I have to explain this to any of the women I know, but it bears repeating: your personal worth is not based on your looks. Let me be blunt: Your. Looks. Don’t. Matter. There are people out there who will have you believe that nothing is more important in your life than looking physically beautiful or sexy. They are wrong, and they perpetuate that myth for one of two reasons: they either want to profit off of your insecurities, or they are insecure about their own appearances and take it out on you. If there are people who judge you based on your looks, they should not be in your life. If you judge yourself based on your looks, please please PLEASE find a way to overcome that; reach out to friends and talk about it, find people who love you for who you are, anything. And most of all, don’t take catcalls or judgments about your beauty as compliments, especially not from men. Men who stop you in the street to say you are beautiful do not understand the meaning of the word, and they only see you as an outlet for sexual fantasy. Do not tolerate it; speak out strongly and passionately against that kind of sexism, and explain to women who accept those compliments that they deserve so much better in life.)
Of course, if you’re naïve and don’t take issue with misogyny, rape, objectification of women, an imbalance of gender power, and people who use banjos to look cool, you could at the very least dislike the song based on merit. The beat is pretty much a ripoff of Nelly’s ‘Hot in Here,’ and Thicke sued the estate of Marvin Gaye because the latter’s descendants thought it was plagiarism.
Let that sink in: he sued someone else because his song sounds like plagiarism.
And that’s the thing: if it’s not plagiarism, it’s a cheap attempt to ride the wave of this summer’s funk resurgence. Justin Timberlake began things in earnest with ‘Suit and Tie’; although it’s not a very interesting or particularly good song, he doesn’t talk about raping his audience. Daft Punk hit the first peak with ‘Get Lucky’ (Another song featuring Williams singing about wanting sex; dude, see a therapist), and instead of ripping people off, the group delicately pays homage to the sounds of disco. And the best is yet to come; September sees the release of Janelle Monae’s second LP, The Electric Lady, which ought to blow the doors off pop music and set a new standard for the soul revival. In the meantime, go check out older soul, funk, and R&B artists. Remember that Marvin Gaye dude I mentioned earlier? His album What’s Going On is one of the finest albums ever crafted. Just about any Stevie Wonder album can reaffirm your belief in love as the driving force of human nature. And if you’re looking for something recent, Channel Orange by Frank Ocean shows what those genres can be when meshed perfectly with hip-hop and rap.
What separates Daft Punk and Monae and Timberlake and Gaye and Ocean and almost any other successful artist from Thicke is that they have the perspective to make good music. They understand how to recognize and pay tribute to those who came before them. Their tunes sound familiar, but fresh.
But when you’re Thicke, singing like you just shotgunned a can of PBR, you’ll sound as stale and tasteless as the beer you drink.
Brain Nourishment 
While I truly enjoyed and respected much of this post, I take issue with some things in this paragraph, as addressed below. (I can also go through all the parts I *really* liked–pretty much everything but the parenthetical–but that’s not that what you need to hear.)
“I don’t think I have to explain this to any of the women I know, but it bears repeating: your personal worth is not based on your looks. Let me be blunt: Your. Looks. Don’t. Matter.”
No, you don’t have to “explain” it to us. You, in fact, shouldn’t be “explaining” anything about our self-image to women. How we perceive ourselves, or should perceive ourselves, is not something you should be “explaining” to us. Aside from that–OF COURSE our looks matter. They matter in getting us jobs. They matter in getting us clothes that fit properly. They matter societally. Should they? That’s irrelevant. They do. Trying to tell us that they don’t just indicates a lack of understanding of what it’s like being a woman in this world.
“There are people out there who will have you believe that nothing is more important in your life than looking physically beautiful or sexy. They are wrong, and they perpetuate that myth for one of two reasons: they either want to profit off of your insecurities, or they are insecure about their own appearances and take it out on you.”
Or they know that pretty people have it easier. They want to be beautiful so they get hired (seriously–look up the studies). They want to be beautiful so clothes fit right (nothing makes me hate my body more than trying to buy clothes. Whether or not it’s “right” or “fair” that they aren’t designed for me doesn’t matter when I’m trying to buy a dress that doesn’t make me look pregnant, or when I’m avoiding food that I love because I want to fit into that dress). Their beliefs may have nothing to do with me.
“If there are people who judge you based on your looks, they should not be in your life.”
That’s just a facile statement, and you know it.
“If you judge yourself based on your looks, please please PLEASE find a way to overcome that; reach out to friends and talk about it, find people who love you for who you are, anything.”
Again, however well-intentioned–and I know it is–hearing this from you doesn’t change anything. And doesn’t make it any more likely that we’ll overcome it. Honestly, all that happens when I hear stuff like this is that it makes me feel like I’m somehow weak, or a failure as a feminist, because I can’t “overcome” it. Of course I can’t. No number of friends can overcome the world in which I live.
“And most of all, don’t take catcalls or judgments about your beauty as compliments, especially not from men. Men who stop you in the street to say you are beautiful do not understand the meaning of the word, and they only see you as an outlet for sexual fantasy.”
This is patronizing. We know perfectly well that those aren’t compliments. We’re not stupid. The vast, overwhelming majority of us don’t like those catcalls one bit, and we’re aware of what they are. We don’t need you to explain it to us.
“Do not tolerate it;”
In the moment, of course I’ll tolerate it. Because he’s bigger and stronger than I am. Because rejection can make men turn violent, sexually or otherwise. Because if he does, lots and lots and lots of people will tell me it was my fault for speaking out.
“speak out strongly and passionately against that kind of sexism,”
Many of us do, when the moment has passed. Maybe it’s making a difference. Maybe it’s not. I increasingly think that the internet is making things worse on this front.
“and explain to women who accept those compliments that they deserve so much better in life.”
Again–while it’s probably less patronizing coming from me, it’s still patronizing. Yes, in some parts of the world (looking at you, Middle East and north Africa) a majority of women truly believe that it’s okay for their husbands to beat them. But I don’t think that the problem here is that women think it’s okay for strangers to tell us we’re beautiful, or tell us to smile; nor do I think that most women “accept” what they’re told. We’re not stupid, and we don’t need these things “explained”.
(Right before your parenthetical, you have this sentence: “Women who enjoy the song in spite of the flaws are tragic figures, who feed into the cultural notion that women ought to be subservient to men, lacking in opinions or assertiveness, and accepting of judgments of their physical beauty as kindness and compliment instead of the pervy sexism that those comments truly are.”
They’re not “tragic figures”, and it’s patronizing, facile, and naive to suggest that they are.)
In fact, the whole parenthetical comes off as patronizing, facile, and naive. Frankly, I’m surprised to see it from you. You’re generally–as evidenced by the rest of the post–much more thoughtful and aware. You even mention “an imbalance of gender power”, and then somehow miss the imbalance in you explaining to me that I’m beautiful and that those men aren’t complimenting me, as well as the inappropriateness of you, a man, saying that a woman is a “tragic figure” because she
a) is just fucking out of energy to fight this shit and/or
b) is picking her battles and didn’t pick this one and/or
c) knows that if she expresses her “opinions or assertiveness” she’s just going to be called shrill, strident, humorless, a bitch.
Which is exactly what I would be called if I were posting this on any blog with a large readership, even a women’s blog. Because men feel entitled to come in and explain to me why I’m wrong. And a bitch.
Thanks for the comment. It’s funny, the parenthetical was the part I added last and felt least comfortable with—something about it felt out of place (well, duh, look at the punctuation I used) and incomplete. Since I’d rather not come off as well-intended-but-actually-a-closet-sexist, I’ll address the faults you pointed out, and a few places where I think
To the use of “explaining,” that’s not an attempt to do outright mansplaining; that’s an introduction to the idea that looks are not equal to self-worth, it’s simply the word that came to mind. And it really isn’t targeted at all women, or even most women; the paragraph is aimed at women I know who judge their own worth based on looks. Is it a large number? Fortunately, no, but it’s a non-zero number, which is disappointing.
The paragraph is something I speak in terms of idealistically. Looks matter societally; I take exception to that, which is why I included the paragraph at all. Would it help to be more pragmatic? Likely so; I’ve spent enough time studying politics to know better. Am I mistaken for not being more pragmatic? For the same reasons mentioned above, likely so. But I chose not to be pragmatic, and I don’t think it detracts from my point.
And I think stressing that idealism is important. To target someone’s insecurities for profit is dark stuff, and I think responding with idealism (which I kept facile by design) is a worthy cause. It will not, on its own, cause someone who values their self-worth based on image to change. But it doesn’t hurt to stress that ideal.
I can see how a lot of what I wrote comes off as patronizing. A load of what I do is rooted in the white male privilege of not having to deal with crap like this on a day-to-day basis and, when it does happen, at the volume it affects women. (I do think the idea of looks as self-worth is becoming more prevalent in men, but that’s not a problem caused by Robin Thicke.) Why I include a bit about not accepting street harassment as compliments is, while I don’t think you or most women interpret street harassment that way, I know women who do. A blog read by all kinds of women (I hope, anyways) isn’t the best outlet to say that isn’t a healthy mentality, but it’s better than not saying anything at all.
It is post-hoc, which, to your thought about speaking out afterwards, I think makes a difference as part of other speakings-out. Like I said before, one moment won’t change someone’s perspective overnight, but many moments can and it’s worth doing. Maybe that’s twee, but yeah, idealism can be that way.
One place where I disagree with you is about women who enjoy the song. Thinking about things, it’s well within the possibility that people hear the song, don’t really listen to the lyrics and like it anyways. But if a woman knows what the song stands for and still likes it, that’s utterly disappointing to me. I see nothing to lose, and some to gain, in listening to music similar in style but much better in message; there’s no fight or battle, just the assertion to not listen to Robin Thicke.
I do see a gender imbalance in the paragraph, largely because the existence of the entire piece is because of a gender imbalance. There aren’t many—hell, are there any?—songs where women (or men) make passive rape threats toward men. And like I mentioned before, guys aren’t conditioned like women are to exist primarily as objects of beauty. What I wrote isn’t very pragmatic, but I do think writing it is: if there exist women who judge their self-worth based on looks and/or take street harassment in a complimentary manner, it’s worth trying to reach out to them.
You may feel what I wrote is patronizing/facile/naïve, and I don’t think you’re not allowed to think that way. I poorly wrote a paragraph that is facile by nature (and I think the patronizing/naïve tone arises from that). Had I done a better job of writing, this conversation wouldn’t be happening. Hopefully, this did a better job of explaining my intent.