I know I shouldn’t even be talking about it. The minute my man said he saw it, I knew I should have just let.it.go. I shouldn’t have watched it, I should have just set my Pandora to my New Wave/90s Lesbian Hits mix and called it a day.
But I watched it, because much like any car crash or Real Housewives episode, I fall prey to looking at things that stay with me and haunt me.
There are a couple of things about the Nicki Minaj video for Anaconda that shouldn’t surprise me. 1-I cannot stand the song. I never liked “Baby Got Back.” Yeah I said it. I was like 9 or so when it came out, I thought it was stupid then, I think it’s stupid now.2- I have a perfectly nice ass, but I’m a size 0, so songs telling women that men love to fantasize about their curves do nothing for me. I actually one of those bean pole things in the magazines. And I think I am it, Miss Thang. I am confident about my body and I don’t need a song telling me to feel otherwise. Even as a kid, I thought “why are we talking about this? It’s still objectifying a body, just a certain type of body I don’t have.” I still danced to it at parties, but like, you know, so what.
Fast forward. There’s that stupid f!cking song again. This time, it’s a, like rap guy’s girlfriend/rapper/feminist, faux-feminist and anti-feminist nightmare person called Nicki Minaj. I’ve never really had much to say about her. I don’t like her music so it’s easy for me to write her off as a general nuisance I can easily ignore (unlike Chris Brown who for some unGODly reason I always find myself moving my tiny ass to his songs). I’m outside, and my man just blurts out “you see that Anaconda video?”
“No. That was an Ice Cube movie?”
“No, the Nicki Minaj song.”
“No.”
“Don’t watch it. You won’t like it.”
Why not? I thought. Why can he watch it, but I can’t? I knew immediately that meant the slut factor had been ramped way up to where my delicate little eyes and sensitive feminine would go straight into horrified shock mode. After all, women hate other women. Especially women who act provocatively for attention, right?
I guess. I mean, women can be jealous creatures, much the glee of men. They love knowing it angers us when they find something arousing other than them. Jealousy goes into overdrive and all of the sudden YOUR man cannot control himself. Well…there’s something to be said about that.
I watched the music video. The song was bad, but I knew it would be. I mean, she didn’t even try to change the song at all. She aggressively argues we must all celebrate her body and “fuck those skinny bitches in the mother fucking club.” Why so glum, Nicki? Maybe we could have been friends if you weren’t so rude about it all.
If you’ve not seen the video, it’s nearly 5 minutes of fleshy women with arrow signs on their butts. Seriously. Just butt after butt after big butt in your face bouncing, wiggling, clapping and flapping. There’s also a lap dance. Drake is seriously just a hideous-looking dude, do we agree? I digress. If Seth Rogen weren’t so afraid of the anti-women backlash he’d sure ensue, the video would be hilarious with him and James Franco reinterpreting the dances and making fart noises.
I am honestly not sure if Nicki wondered if people wouldn’t find it offensive. The video, as I type this, has 164,915,125 views so plenty of people either like or came to express their outrage, or just came. Watching women bounce and jiggle around for 5 minutes is not the most evil thing in the world, but people sure are judgey about it.
Including myself, I suppose. The first thing any parent will think is extremely instinctive. You do kinda have to be a parent to understand. If you have a daughter, all you can do is see your daughter. That’s weird. It’s like I’m already pre-judging my daughter for something she has no control over. Society already wants to throw a shroud over a young girl’s head and lock her away from such depravity anytime a women receives praise for “vulgar” sexual behavior. My kid is three. Give her a break already! If you have a son, you want to make damn sure he doesn’t see anything like that lest his three-year-old penis need to impregnate someone.
Really. These are the absurd thoughts parents have. If you’re in your late 20s or early 30s, you have NOT forgotten you booty shaking days (if they are even gone). You have NOT forgotten that once upon a time you wanted people to find you alluring in the most base ways, maybe you ladies threw out those super skintight black pants (still have mine!). Maybe if you’re a man, you no longer listen to that Eminem CD at the highest bass level. I mean, it’s hard to eke out of pop culture-some remain in it, some never deigned themselves, some weren’t allowed due to religious or personal reasons. For me, I never wanted to be Madonna. But I sure wouldn’t have minded being a girl who was talked about the way they used to talk about Britney. I was so jealous of the way men talked about Britney 10 years ago. Now I kinda realize they talk that way about every woman at some point in their beer consumption. Sex is so captivating. Minaj has simply pushed it further.
BUT. If parents and just, you know, citizens, are outraged that a woman is popping her ass in a video, they have the right to be concerned, and that doesn’t make them losers. I can read. I see what people are writing about her. And, yeah, it’s mean. After all, no one likes the slutty girl, not even the men when it’s all said and…done. Basically, I’m concerned by all the hatred it causes. Should you burn someone at the stake for twerking? Should we be morally outraged that Miley isn’t the little girl we always wanted her to be? Eh. Yes and No. All I’m saying is, I get it. The power to arouse people is very arousing. You can’t exactly be mad at someone for making a buck that way.
But what I’ve learned about myself is that if I get too focused on being upset by pop culture, I have fallen victim to my own stupidity. Can I shield myself from jealousy? Nah. Can I shield my husband from breasts and butts better than my own? Nope. Can I shield my daughter from idealizing those who use their bodies to sell us more than a song? I can try, but if I shield her too hard, she’ll turn out weird. The world has always celebrated the vulgar and base. If you don’t believe me, you are completely naive. It’s sex. It makes people crazy.
But it’s hypocritical to forget that at one point in time YOU KNOW you wanted all the lust in the world and somehow, you survived. And if you’re a really good parent, you’ll show your kid that video, and then you’ll put on Sam Cooke or Robert Johnson or Vivaldi or Nina Simone or Edith Piaf and ask them which they preferred. You already know the answer. Hell, I’m going to go put some Nina Simone on right now, thanks ME for reminding myself.