You’re an intentional, conscientious person, but that same song that gets your booty shakin’ contains elements of sexism, violence, racism, or other flavor of bigotry. How do you deal with this cognitive dissonance? Can you listen to sexist music and still be conscientious?

Admit it: before you gave a good hard listen to the lyrics of Earth’s favorite creeper Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines,” it kiiind of made you want to shake your rump. Or, in my case, more than kind of.

While the rapey-ness of “Blurred Lines” has been well documented, its infectiously catchy nature causes a difficult tug-of-war between your brain and booty. What do we even call this special kind of conscious confusion? Musicognitive Dissonance? Cognitive Disso-dance? I’ll get back to you when I finalize some new buzzword for this phenomenon.

Even if there are more questions than answers, try on these three perspectives when handling the cognitive dissonance of enjoying sexist music you know you shouldn’t like, but just “know you want it.”

Cultural Context

Human behavior is often merely a symptom of a deeper psychological or societal undercurrent dictating the thought processes behind our actions.

Let’s step away from Mr. Thicke for a moment and look at hip hop as an example. How much of hip hop’s misogyny can be traced back to decades of institutionalized racism, hatred, and poverty? And regardless of context, why would we ever make excuses to be anti-women? And as a U.S.-born white man, what in the world would I personally know about any of this?

Ultimately, where does cultural context end and personal accountability begin? If I had that answer, I’d be the world’s greatest judge, psychologist, or relationship columnist.

Saving vs. Savoring the World

A female entrepreneur friend of mine whom I deeply admire lives her life based on a sage piece of advice: “Balance how much you try to save the world with how much you savor it.”

This perspective on music boils down to how willing you are to compartmentalize your life. You donate money and volunteer time championing worthy social causes; you support local business by shopping in your community; you try to buy organic and local whenever possible. Can’t you have the social consciousness equivalent of a diet “cheat day?” None of us are perfect — we’re all figuring things out and trying our best.

If you’re adamant about liking certain music for the beat but not the message it promotes, you’ve simply got to own it as your guilty pleasure while remaining true to your conscience through your actions and energy in other aspects of life. This perspective, however, can turn into a slippery slope toward one of the must fundamentally flawed arguments commonly used against homosexuality: “Love the sinner, hate the sin.”

So, is it “Love the music, hate the message”? Now my brain’s really doing the cognitive dissonance two-step.

Conversation Fuel

Even though the message behind “Blurred Lines” is decidedly awful, at least it has gotten a worthwhile conversation going. The song provides context and platform for a global conversation, and pushback against it has increased universal awareness about the ills of misogyny and served as a rallying point for thought leaders and supporters.

Some lessons are difficult to teach without real world examples, and though it’s unfortunate the conversation even needed to happen, at least the world is participating.

Follow Garth on Twitter @garthinkingcap

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ColumnRobin Thicke’s new video is the stalker jam we’ve all been waiting for.

Everyone’s favorite creepy uncle Robin Thicke, who brought us “Blurred Lines,” the rape hit of summer 2013, is back with a new video.

It’s disturbing in a whole new way.

In February, Robin Thicke and his wife Paula Patton separated. While it’s hard to pinpoint why, and I’m no marriage counselor, this photo of his hand nestled between a young woman’s ass cheeks might be a clue.

Thicke just released his the first video, “Get Her Back,” from the forthcoming album, “Paula.” The good news is that the song is super boring and very unlikely to take over the world like “Blurred Lines” did.

The bad news is that this video sends a scary message about relationships. Let’s be clear that this weepy, formulaic, god-awful song wouldn’t be on anyone’s radar if not for the super scary video. In my dreams, this is a PR move and Thicke isn’t actually stalking or threatening Paula Patton.

Dreams of a better world for pop musicians and their exes aside, let’s talk first about how you can read the title in two ways. There’s the lost love angle, but there’s also a little vengeance here, right?!

I might not have noticed that double entendre if not for the video. Here’s a breakdown of Robin Thicke’s on-screen breakdown (I watched it all so you don’t have to): There’s moody lighting, streaming tears and text messages popping up that we’re supposed to assume are notes he and Paula sent each other. The texts appear over violent imagery, including a possible drowning and Thicke pretending to shoot himself in the head, making this the scariest episode of Pop Up Video ever.

The video ends with the chilling words: “This is just the beginning.”

First of all, if my estranged husband ever sent me a text using “u” in place of “you” I would call my lawyer immediately and finalize that shit. But, more importantly, I would also ask for a restraining order.

And let’s flip this for a second. What if this was a woman singing? Would anyone think it was romantic or would we call her a psycho stalker? I think we know. Are we so hungry to see an emotional man that we’re willing to accept stalking in its place?

The fact that anyone would ever call this video romantic and that there’s a #TakeHimBack trend on Twitter is deeply disturbing. There’s nothing romantic about making someone feel unsafe. There’s nothing romantic about stalking or public harassment.

These lines aren’t blurry at all.

That Happened is Libby Lowe’s weekly column for EcoSalon analyzing media, news and pop culture through a feminist lens. Keep in touch with Libby @LibbyLowe.

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The post Robin Thicke Keeps it Creepy: That Happened appeared first on EcoSalon.

When it comes to how we talk about young women and sexuality, Miley’s twerk is the least of our problems.

Miley Cyrus’ VMA performance took over the news cycle this week. There was outrage about slut-shaming—why was everyone disgusted by her but not by Robin Thicke? There was a gut feeling among many that Miley Cyrus’ performance was racist, but no one summed up why better than blogger Cate with her post, “Solidarity Is For Miley Cyrus: The Racial Implications of Her VMA Performance.” If you read one more post about the twerk heard around the world, make it Cate’s.

There was reaction [yawn] from the Thicke and Cyrus families and endless cable news coverage of the VMAs mocked aptly by The Onion. So, yeah, everyone (myself included) is spending the week obsessing over a young 20-year-old white woman appropriating black culture, abusing her tongue muscles and rubbing her junk all over a guy old enough (36) to be her creepy uncle.

But something else happened this week that, by comparison, barely made headlines. A teacher who raped his 14-year-old student was sentenced to 30 whole days in jail. In 2008, the girl was raped by her 49-year-old teacher, Stacey Dean Rambold. The victim-blaming in this case started at the top, with this statement from Judge G. Todd Baugh: “It’s not probably the kind of rape most people think about. It was not a violent, forcible, beat-the-victim rape, like you see in the movies. But it was nonetheless a rape. It was a troubled young girl, and he was a teacher. And this should not have occurred.” He has since apologized, but the sentiment is clear.

Maybe if the rape had been more like a movie rape, the victim would still be alive. But just a few weeks before her 17th birthday, she took her own life. After confessing, the rapist was sentenced to 30 days in jail. He confessed to raping a child and got 30 days. One month. Because, you know, like a girl who died at 16, his life is sorta ruined, too.

After the sentencing, the victim’s mother shouted at the court, “You people suck.” She went on to point out in a statement, “Judge Baugh, who never met our daughter, justified the paltry sentence saying she was older than her chronological age. I guess somehow it makes a rape more acceptable if you blame the victim, even if she was only 14.”

Older than her age. Does that mean she wore lipstick? Low-cut shirts? Flirted with her teacher? Sought attention? Asked for it? Or, does it somehow connect to the idea that we’re so accustomed to seeing young women on display that kids are fair game for sexual predators?

I am not implying that Miley Cyrus was coerced into her performance, or that Thicke is a rapist—and I’m definitely not saying that the staged performance we saw on the VMAs is akin to what happened to this teenager in Montana. Cyrus is an adult woman who makes a living performing—but it’s hard to forget that only a few years ago, she was simply child star, Hannah Montana.

As a culture, we sexualize young women—just look back a few years to the countdown to Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen’s 18th birthday. I am pretty sure no one was waiting to see who they would vote for. We make it unsafe for girls to experiment with their sexuality and figure out who they want to be as women. We tell them that sexy is cool and being provocative will make people like them. Then, when older men (or women) take advantage of them, we slut-shame them and blame them for being victims of crimes.

Not for nothing, PornHub released a study of keyword searches by state this week. “Teen” was the top search in seven states.

Image: PVBroadz

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ColumnRobin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” is super fun (if you ignore the lyrics).The summer of 2012 was a sugar-coated squeefest with Carly Rae Jepson’s “Call Me Maybe” as the unofficial soundtrack. We were treated to (or tortured by depending on your point of view) the song everywhere we went—not to mention the countless spoofs, including my favorite by Cookie Monster.

2013 is shaping up a little differently. Before I dive in, for the record, I love pop music. I blame spin class for this lapse in taste. There’s no better music in the world for spinning than Ke$ha, Gaga, Robin Thicke and the like. In fact, if I didn’t spin (and hang out with gay men), there’s a good chance I would have missed the “Blurred Lines” radio takeover—I might have missed the “Call Me Maybe”/”Head Like a Hole” mashup, which would have been tragic. But I digress.

Back to Mr. Thicke. First, all of you over-30s will be sad to hear that the kids today have no idea that his dad, Alan Thicke, is the real superstar of the family for surviving years working with Kirk “homophobe” Cameron on the show Growing Pains. Young Robin launched his singing career back in 2000 and people in the U.S. started to care when he opened for Beyonce in 2007.

“Blurred Lines” is my first real introduction to Robin Thicke and, at first, I was all over that shit. What fun! Seriously. However, the song celebrates rape culture in a way that I am not entirely comfortable with. The refrain: “I know you want it but you’re a good girl,” is just a little… off—especially when followed by the line, “tried to domesticate ya.” Then there’s the video, which is banned all over the place. Mostly, it features naked women dancing around fully-clothed men—sometimes the ladies are carrying animals.

The obvious conclusion is that this is a sexist piece of crap. But pop culture is rarely that simple. In a GQ interview, Thicke blew off his critics and explained that the origin of the song is Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give it Up” and catcall culture, if you can call it that. He said: “All three of us [Thicke and co-performers T.I. and Pharrell] are happily married with children, we were like, ‘We’re the perfect guys to make fun of this.’ People say, ‘Hey, do you think this is degrading to women?’ I’m like, ‘Of course it is. What a pleasure it is to degrade a woman. I’ve never gotten to do that before. I’ve always respected women.’’ Obviously, a joke. You can practically hear the eye-roll directed at the crazy man-haters who take everything all serious-like.

Personally, I have a hard time saying that anything meant solely to entertain—or get me off my ass to workout—needs to be socially responsible. But then I remember that not everyone is actually thinking about lyrics; many are just absorbing the underlying message and missing Thicke’s irony. They don’t know he’s married. They don’t know he respects women. All they hear is this: When everyone is drunk and the lines are blurry, she wants it.

When it comes to “Blurred Lines,” I DO know I want it. It’s a great pop song. I don’t think Thicke and team are advocating rape. I don’t think they are personally anti-woman. But, I do think this is yet another piece of work perpetuating rape culture for those who probably don’t even know the term. With everything going on in the world, including efforts to protect sexual harassment on college campuses (yea, you read that right), this hit sends a dangerous message.

For those of you who can’t stomach this as the song of the summer, fear not. Britney has done it again with the bad-good “Oh La La.” Thank you, Ms. Spears, for the lady jam.

Image: Rapgenius (video still)

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