Firstly, let me introduce you to the song 'Blurred Lines', the hit by Robin Thicke. Most people have heard it- if you haven't, and you want to listen to it, go ahead and look it up. It goes against my principles to post it here. My problem with it? Well, to start off with, it's all about sex, with obvious references to sexual acts. Though I don't find this a huge issue in a suitable setting (eg, far away from kids etc.), it gets worse. The song continuously objectifies women, making them into nothing more than objects used for sex. My thoughts to this are pretty much 'what even?'. I thought we'd actually progressed from the Dark Ages. Does it still come as a shock to people that women are people too?! And yet, it still gets worse- many people have found that the song has connotations of rape, and pretty strong ones at that. Project Unbreakable (trigger warning- descriptions of sexual assault) did a photo-set showing things rapists have said to their victims, and lines from the song; this article (same trigger warning) sums it all up pretty well. Overall, the song is just pure filth, and should not be allowed- in fact, some universities have completely banned it.
In case you haven't guessed by now, the lovely family-friendly roller skating disco and Blurred Lines collided pretty spectacularly. Whilst we were having lots of fun skating around, surrounded by children of all ages, someone thought it would be a good idea to suggest the DJ played Blurred Lines. Which he did. Causing me to have a huge moment of what the hell is going on?! Unfortunately, there was little I could do about it at the time as it was so loud, and I had no idea about the protocol for asking for a song to be turned off etc. Therefore, I resolved to email the company as soon as possible, and ask for the song to be banned from their events completely. I did this by leaving a message in the online guestbook, along with my email address.
They got back to me a couple of days later, claiming that the song they played had nothing to do with them, as it must have been requested by a customer. Very annoyed, I replied, saying that they must have a list of songs they won't play (eg, due to swearing), and that this song should have been included in that, particularly with the rape references and the amount of children present at the disco. They then said that they couldn't ban every song that might upset someone, so couldn't ban this one. In fact, they compared it to a love song. A love song. By that point, I was hugely angry, and conveyed this in my email. I possibly also threatened to tell as many people as I could not to use their services. That might have happened. Anyway, their email back was, thankfully, a lot more satisfactory- they finally realised that the song isn't acceptable, and agreed to ban it. It took a while, but we got there in the end. And whilst it's small, it's still a feminist victory for me :)
Also, these are quite tongue in cheek, but check out the feminist versions of Blurred Lines- admittedly the videos go 'the other way' in terms of sexism- however, it is pretty obviously tongue in cheek- I highly doubt the people who made them believe that men should be treated like that, they're just turning the situation around to show what it's like. Also, the lyrics are beautiful. If sweary.
Defined Lines