When I listen to the radio, I can’t help but sing along, even when I know I shouldn’t—like when I hear a catchy tune littered with sexualized imagery and glittering misogyny.
When “Blurred Lines” came out years ago, it sparked a big conversation around consent. To any woman, it’s obvious that Robin Thicke is coercing someone who is firmly not interested. He laments, despite her denies, “I know you want it.” The broader sexualization of the word “no” serves as his twisted reasoning to continue to push, to pursue, to convince everyone and himself that women love to say no as a way to say yes.
The backlash was so swift it's hard to fathom how the song was even released. Art is inherently political; how did the sexualization of “no” become acceptable gender politics? How did casual misogyny become imperceptible, hiding in plain sight as the ‘reality’ of male and female behavior?
This song was signed off on by a record company backed by industry titan Universal Music Group because it is not unlike other songs. This song is not disturbing because it is different, but because it is explicit.
Why are women in songs always stripped of their humanity, boiled down to their body parts?
Listen to almost any song on the radio, and you’ll hear a variation on the same sexist assault. Post Malone and 21 Savage’s “rockstar” blurs out the “grrra ta ta” of a gun firing, presumably for ears sensitive to violence, and yet it keeps “man, your girlfriend is a groupie” and “hit her from the back, pulling on her tracks” unaltered for audiences to consume. Nick Jonas claims he has a “right to be hellish” because he still “gets jealous” of other men looking at HIS girlfriend. And while I adore One Direction with my whole heart, the Brits tell men who try to steal “their” respective girls to “find another one ‘cause she belongs to me.”
Most disheartening of all, to me, is Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright.” A BLM protest song of utmost importance, the song unites listeners under the optimism that justice will come with time. Despite the destruction of Black communities through mass incarceration, unjust violence, and labels of inferiority, Lamar reassures “we gon’ be alright.” The videos of crowds screaming these lyrics in June 2020 are monumental and moving.
But in the first verse of his song, he ironically claims that “pretty pussy and Benjamin is the highlight” of his career. It's not the use of bodies as an indulgence that I have a problem with, as sex can understandably be used as escapism. I struggle with the depersonalization of his partners.
Why are women in songs always stripped of their humanity, boiled down to their body parts? I see it time and time again, when I laugh and yell the lyrics in my car, pretending that I don’t see the reinforcement of a disrespectful gender role over and over again in each line. Every time those songs play, and every time I sing along, I endorse a world view that subordinates women as sex objects. That sexualizes domination. That makes sex and sexuality exist only as a relationship between a man in charge and a vagina to be used at his whim. Women exist as a sexual tool to impose masculine prowess, aggression, and control.
I don’t want music to be held accountable only when it goes beyond the boundaries of acceptable misogyny—I want erotic language that embraces equal sexual control.
I’m sorry, Harry Styles, but I don’t “belong” to anyone. And Nick, you don’t have the right to be a jackass just because you feel like your girlfriend is a sexual possession that needs your protection. And 21 Savage: take some fucking accountability. Porn has associated violence with getting off, and I understand that media can determine our values, but we do not get to be passive observers devoid of the responsibility of choosing what we believe in. Especially when those values are morally wrong. The sex you brag about is borderline assault, and that will never be acceptable.
The women in so many of these songs that adore domination, that find degradation sexy, are a fantasy from the minds of the powerful to get the powerless to behave. A character who reflects men’s vision of ideal womanhood, she is a mirage who willingly participates in her own abuse.
She isn’t real. A real woman is left to pick up the pieces every time a court asks her if she really didn’t want to have sex, because if popular music tells us the truth, a verbal “no” can mean yes, and women actually like to be raped.
“Blurred Lines” is not an outlier; it’s sexism that went a bit too far. I don’t want music to be held accountable only when it goes beyond the boundaries of acceptable misogyny—I want erotic language that embraces equal sexual control. I want sex to be more than giving and taking. I want two parties that, even in casual encounters, recognize the humanity in one another. I want to be more than the body I inhabit. And I want that ideology in songs on the radio, so when I sing along, I feel guilt-free to close my eyes and shout the words.
