Blurred lines

Okay so Admittedly I am a little late on the band wagon here but I hadn't heard the song, only the controversy surrounding it. You'd be amazed by how much pop culture you can manage to miss out on when you take away the radio and tv. Anyway I was driving back to Waterford the other day and I turned on Beat fm for some background noise and Blurred lines by Robin Thicke comes on twice during the journey. I'd heard other people talking about great the song was and I can't even count the amount of times it was shared as this amazing new song in my facebook news feed. I think I may have seen a few seconds of the video and dismissed it as not for me. On this particular day I was captive audience so I didn't tune out or even sing along, I actually listened to the words and started to see where the critics were coming from.

Now before you get all upset by where I'm going with this, I need to say that I don't think by any means that this is the worst song out there because for as long as I can remember there's been a plethora of songs in popular culture advocating violence, demeaning women and just generally being a bit disgusting. Does anyone remember the Outhere brothers? consider my point made. I remember once in my early twenties mishearing a lyric to a song and becoming outraged. It was from the early 90's but was still being played nostalgically on nights out and I think the lyrics went something like this 'girl, I'm going to make you sweat. sweat till you can't sweat no more and when you cry out, I'm going to push it, push it some more'. The thing is I was fully convinced that the line was and if you cry out instead of when and it actually has completely different connotations because with that tiny misinterpretation it sounds as though the song is advocating non consensual sex and I do believe that was the case I was arguing until I was almost blue in the face. I later discovered my mistake and dealt with it by never mentioning that argument ever again.  Which is as far as I'm concerned the only way to handle being wrong. 

Anyway what I'm saying is this is not the same thing at all. Thicke has come under fire recently because this song has been described as 'rapey' and the video as misogynistic to women. I see where they are coming from. The hook in the song goes like this 'I hate these blurred lines / I know you want it / the way you grab me / must wanna get nasty but you're a good girl'
While it's not explicitly stating non consent, it's almost implied. The issue does not seem  to be a black and white one but more that it is lingering in the many shades of grey between persuading someone to misbehave a little and actually coercing them into sex that they don't want. You could say the lines are blurred which is almost funny given the title of the song. I took the liberty of watching the video and found it both derogatory and demeaning to women both in the way that they are dressed and the way the men are treating them. I have seen worse videos and I am sure I will see worse again in years to come but this is not a critique of the music industry as a whole and it's attitude of permissiveness but merely my opinion on this song and the message it is sending.

It all feeds back to the same thing and I know this is not a new issue but anyone who reads my blog posts would be aware of this because I've hardly been shy in tackling the issue. It's personal to me because I am a woman who has grown up in a society saturated with popular media telling me how I should behave and how I should feel and also what the world thinks of women in general. When I watch the video for Blurred lines there is an undercurrent there that makes me feel  uncomfortable in a number of ways. The way in which the women in it are portrayed and demeaned and tone of the lyrics just send the wrong sort of message. At least I am an adult now who knows my own mind but what of the teenagers whose minds are still forming, what is this saying to them about their place in society as women. Probably much the same thing as the likes of nuts magazine. It tells us to be valued for how we look and not who we are and is this a message we really want to be sending.