Wickstone’s Weekly Work – #3

This week we started off every class listening to a new song with some potentially ‘sexist’ undertones. Some much more hidden than others, this daily exercise inspired much dialogue between our class and some brilliant observations were made around the room. As we kept listening though, all I could think of was that every damn song was sexist if you look hard enough!

Now, I say this lightly, because some songs are so bad you could probably be deaf and still understand their sexism. However, majority of the songs we listened to are ones I have heard before when I was younger, and was left completely unfazed by the song because whatever sexism lay hidden within the lyrics went right over my head. On this topic, Alex O posed a really good question “Does not noticing make it better or worse?”, and as you can imagine, some dialogue – majority of it civil – ensued.

Here’s my take for the week; you can’t blame the artists. You just can’t. I’d love to think Pitbull was revolutionary enough to decide that women in bikinis was ‘hot’, but unfortunately, that rhetoric existed long before the time of Mr. Worldwide. Now, I use Pitbull because his song “Timber” with Ke$ha was featured on our game of Sexist Or Not, and sparked quite the debate. I don’t think any of the artists that make these sexually-inspired songs should face grief, they’re simply banking off everyones favourite thing: sex. In all honesty, it’s definitely a shame that the Top 100 is filled with songs that reference women and their appearance, but we’re so deep in to this whole, as a society, that these hit artists really aren’t the one to blame. We’re probably better off trying to embrace it – which many female artists are doing – rather than trying to erase sexualization in music as a whole.

Having said all this I should definitely be clear, this does not go for every song out there. There’s no denying that songs will occasionally get a little too “rapey”, and those deserve all the negative attention they get, in fact, they’re the problem. But it’s the vibrant, sensual nature of just about every other song getting played on the radio right now that I don’t think is something we should be scrutinizing as a society. After all, it’s important to remember, songs become hits because people around the world love them!

And hey, call me privileged, but I do miss being able to bop my head to a song without thinking about the deeper meaning of the lyrics.