We’re being pulled and pushed from both ends, but being sold the same message: your end game is your man.
This is the reality of our music videos in 2017: Girls you can’t properly identify because the camera hovers around everything under the chin and above the knees. Smiles that have no meaning or context, and loose dazed dance moves.
It’s almost like a dictatorship; girls are ordered to behave in a seemingly drugged yet happy manner, without a speck of complexity.
Oh, and of course, the alcohol and the cars. They are complementary products modelled alongside the female body. They can be exchanged for one another or collated together. But they must be placed. And wavering focus paid to them.
And in the mighty centre, the successful famous men. Singing lyrics like they mean it, each possessing their own personality, expressing their egos in a multitude of ways. Each owning a sense of individuality. Their success is at the forefront, but more so, they are separated as individuals, almost always accompanied by a hovering aerial view to ensure they are not just (undesirable) bodies.
This is the reality of our music videos in 2017. And then we have the other end – those who condemn this representation of women, rightfully so. You’ll usually find them in your family and your society-conscious friends; however, they come with their own somewhat contradictory message.
While condemning such sexualisation of women that ultimately teaches our boys that sex is the central purpose of women and teaches our girls attractiveness is their number one priority – these same people then swiftly ask “So, when are you getting married?”
The question comes in many forms. Concerned parents and relatives ask “why there are no good boys out there”, grandparents emotionally blackmail by bemoaning that they “will not see you get married before leaving this world”, and friends put the utmost emphasis on ‘boy-talk’.
Boys are delicious and a great toy to have, but why is the emphasis so strong on finding one? It comes from both sides. If we’re not being told to sexualise ourselves to please them, we’re being made to feel incompetent because we don’t have a committed one at our disposal. Since when has a relationship with the opposite sex become solely about love, sex and marriage? At what point did we become blind to the reality that before being boys and girls, we are humans?
Know that your behaviour and your discourse is ultimately the sculpting feature of the next generation’s attitude towards their opposite sex.
As a girl, when I see a boy, music videos (among many, many other things) are positioning me to assess my level of sexiness to get that guys attention, while my family is probing me to assess whether I can get him to put a ring on it. Both ways, I am diminishing my value and his value to mere societal constructs of girlfriends and boyfriends or wives and husbands. I am forced to strip away the one thing we both have in common, and the one thing that will allow us to connect at a spiritual level rather than a superficial one: the knowledge that we are human beings before we are objects of desire and marriage.
About the author
Sajda Yakub is a born Melbournian, her father being born in London, her mother being an immigrant from Fiji, and her ancestors being slaves from Uttar Pradesh in India.