Anybody who knows me knows I have nothing against sex. It is good for the skin, it is fun and it sells. But boy, am I tired of this The Way You Love Me act. The women-want-sex-too act. These bitches in heat licking bars and smashing their crotches at the camera make me tired. And all in the name of a noble, ancient goal – female empowerment… What, now?
I have nothing against Keri Hilson and her video. I think she looks fantastic and I love the choreography, which I find innovative, risqué and very sexy with arresting visuals of Keli literally dripping with desire. I don’t think it’s a bad track either, I love dancing to it. It has the kind of sexual urgency that I love in music (think Déjà Vu or In The Closet), it cracks a little in the middle, and has a good measure of hysterics which are always appealing to a neurotic like me. The sex visuals are viral (unlike Rihanna’s davidlachapellesque S&M or Xtina’s ugly Dirrty), the beat is strange and enchanting, the lyrics are sometimes inventive – I got the kind of loving (pussy) that will keep you off the streets, but… But why the fuck wrap it up like another ode to female empowerment (last year’s Telephone comes to mind - brrr)? Why can’t it position itself as what it is – another pop song about a horny siren shouting booty call to her boo?
I have nothing against the video itself. The bad acting and spastic dialogue is a bore but the dancing parts are tasty. The premise is what makes me uneasy. Keri wants me to believe she is advocating for me here, a modern 21st century woman. I don’t believe her, like I don’t believe Gaga. They don’t do it for me, they do it for publicity, period. No one talked about Keri before like they talk about her after the video. With Telephone I said the only thing Gaga could do from that point on was wear meat, and she did, predictably, although she skipped a swarm of flies I suggested would look so appropriate round that rotten, tired production. Ladies, you are fucking bored, and you like your green bills, so don’t tell me you are here to help me cope. I don’t buy that.
There is something important these bitches forget. Real women aren’t protected by square-headed security guards around the clock. Real women have to deal with horny bosses on a daily basis, men three times bigger than them. Real women have to deal with strange men having ‘trouser problems’ in their presence when they are trying to have an intelligent, professional conversation with them. Real women have labels to deal with, and if they are sexy, they can’t be taken seriously. Real women don’t work out every day to be stared at in nightclubs. They work out to kick some ass. These bitches who thrust their pussies at the camera seem to forget that this kind of ‘liberation’ is only possible in the First World with its ‘rights’ and ‘freedoms’, with a rigid penal system intact, social order, jails full of rapists and molesters, etc. This kind of order is artificially constructed; it is temporary in theory, it can evaporate into oblivion in case of an apocalyptic event, or even an abrupt change of social order. Like war. Or an epidemic. What are you without police, courts, army? In your fishnets, tight corsets and Alexander McQueen heels? Can you even fucking run in them? What are you with your guns when the men three times the size of you can always rip them out your hands while their guns are ALWAYS intact?
This empty talk about female liberation/expression through music and visuals like those of Keri’s video applies only to the complacent, ‘steady’ societies where social order has presumably ‘tamed’ the primal instincts (look at the rates of sexual abuse and rape and see how civilized we are). This you-can-look-but-you-can’t-touch philosophy only works in the synthetic bounds of ‘civilized’ society which hasn’t been around for long, in case anyone forgot. Hey, everyone, look at my thumping pussy, Keri is screaming, but if you brush against me at a public event, hey, that shit is invasion of privacy, I’m taking you to court. This whole agenda doesn’t apply to those of us who know the joys of unwanted attention a bit too well. Imagine the character of Sophia Loren from Two Women spreading her legs to show how fucking powerful she is when she has a kid to protect from horny soldiers and there are bombs going off all around… How ridiculous this ‘liberation’ bullshit must look to women having to walk for miles every day to get water for their children, or wreck their heads about what the fuck to serve for dinner. Watch the third act of 28 Days Later, and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
I sometimes like to imagine Rihanna, lost and alone without her bald security men, her red hair standing on end, walking in the empty dark streets, with someone (tall, dark, and handsome? I don’t think so) lurking around the corner. Would you like the smell of sex then, darling, when it doesn’t necessarily come from the object of your desire? Would you rather clutch a shotgun then, or a hard cock?
It ain’t gonna be pretty when we go back to zero.
