Tuesday, September 03, 2013

What's Sauce for The Goose Is Not Sauce For The Gander? Robin Thicke And Robin Thicke Parodied.


First there's the Blurred Lines song by Robin Thicke, with lyrics which are really all about the supposed blurred lines about whether no means yes and so on.  You can see the song here:



And you can read the lyrics to the song here.  A small taste:

One thing I ask of you
Let me be the one you back that ass to
Go, from Malibu, to Paris, boo
Yeah, I had a bitch, but she ain't bad as you
So hit me up when you passing through
I'll give you something big enough to tear your ass in two
Swag on, even when you dress casual
I mean it's almost unbearable
In a hundred years not dare, would I
Pull a Pharside let you pass me by
Nothing like your last guy, he too square for you
He don't smack that ass and pull your hair like that.

The video shows several men in suits and several women in what amounts to very skimpy beach wear.  Some observers think that's how hetero sex looks:  men all suited up and women in their underwear.  I've read YouTube comments, my sweetings!

Then there's this parody take on the Blurred Lines song, called Defined Lines:



It's lyrics are stronger and more reverse-sexist, but the idea is to do a gender reversal.  The singers performed the song as part of the University of Auckland’s Law Revue show.  That's in New Zealand.

The parody video seems to have been removed from YouTube for a while, but it's back at the time I'm writing this post.

What's fascinating about the latter song are the comments to it.  Quite a few of the male commentators regard the parody as an example of misandry, the degradation of men and an example of the feminazis wanting to have their high-heeled foot on their necks.*  But this doesn't seem to make them understand the point of the reversal parody at all.

Other men (and women) get the point.  Popular media defines sexuality as naked or barely-clad women who want everything anyone might think to do to them, and having that definition painted like a bull's eye  on all women's backs (or at least young women's backs) makes life sometimes disgusting and often more cumbersome.

The other thing some critics of the reversal don't seem to get that objectifying men in  a few rare parodies doesn't equal in volume the non-stop treatment of women that way, doesn't make the two things identical, doesn't make one type of sexism every bit as bad as the other type of sexism**.

Because the sexism in the reversal is an attempt to wake people up, to show how it feels when the shoe is on the other foot, to show the gander how the goose feels.
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*Except that feminists are supposed to be ugly and not wearers of high-heeled shoes.  The reason they are feminists is because they hate men and want women to rule the world, and also because they can't get laid but would really want their hair pulled and their asses torn in two and will end up happily making sandwiches for all misogynists.  Or something like that, summarized from some of the comments in the thread attached to the parody song.  At the same time, a remarkably large number of comments were positive so don't over-paint this tendency.  Otherwise you are beginning to slip and slide into the equivalent of all-women-are-sluts disease, only from the other side.

**Quite honestly, if men and women were presented in equally degrading ways in sexual media things would probably be better.  For one thing, men are less likely to accept that treatment as can be seen from the comments to the parody post.  For another thing, then everyone would have that bull's eye painted on their backs.  But naturally I'd prefer something better than equal degradation.