"Blurred Lines"

[Content Note: Rape culture; objectification.]

A bunch of folks have emailed or tweeted me to ask what I think of Robin Thicke's new song "Blurred Lines," which is all about how a girl at the club totally wants to have sex with him, even though she hasn't said so, and the video for the song, which includes topless supermodels dancing around Thicke and the song's featured artists, Pharrell and T.I.

Well, I think Robin Thicke is gross, his song is harmful, and his video is objectifying garbage.

In the year of our lord Jesus Jones two thousand and thirteen, there is no fucking excuse for writing a song that essentially just sets to a catchy tune the ancient rape apologia that is "your mouth says no, but your body says yes."

When there are actual rapists using this very line of bullshit to defend having raped an unconscious young woman at a party, it is the worst kind of shameless, contemptible indecency to turn "Talk about getting blasted / I hate these blurred lines / I know you want it, but you're a good girl / The way you grab me, must want to get nasty" into a summer anthem that might have been played at that party.

Thicke defended the execrable video thus:

Thicke told VH1 that it was [director Diane Martel]'s idea to do a "Terry Richardson kind of video." At first he might have been skeptical, but he said, "'Hey, you know, let's go for it.' 'Cause for me, nudity is the least offensive thing in the whole world. Guns, violence, war? That's offensive. A woman's body has been painted and sculpted and talked about since the beginning of man. What I enjoy about the video is that we're not ogling and degrading them, we're laughing and being silly with them."

...Thicke has insisted, a bit guilelessly, that by having the women naked, he was pushing the boundaries. "We pretty much wanted to take all the taboos of what you're not supposed to do—bestiality, you know, injecting a girl in her bum with a five-foot syringe—I just wanted to break every rule of things you're not supposed to do and make people realize how silly some of these rules are."

Rules like: Only have sex with someone who has given enthusiastic and explicit consent.