Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines

In every music video on Youtube, there are different ways the audience may read it. In 2013, Robin Thicke released “Blurred Lines”. Many were surprised at how explicit the content was, and also confused on exactly what Thicke meant when he sang “blurred lines… I know you want it”. Youtubers, more specifically feminist Youtubers, took it upon themselves to make a parody showing the ways they believe Thicke promoted rape and the demeaning of women in his video. To start off, you can see the most obvious reading of the parody video. Basically, three women very fed up with getting a rap of being unintellectual and needing a man to take care of their “needs”. It hints at the rape culture brought up in Thicke’s original video, saying men think we need them to take charge and overpower us. In the video, however, they mention that a simple vibrator can do an even better job than they think they can. A lot of women watching the video could agree that we can usually take care of ourselves. The more feminist women are, the more they would obviously agree with this reading of the video, as they themselves would prefer not to be thought of as just a dumb, sex toy created for man’s desires.

The biggest thing I can think of when I first watched this video, that maybe the women thought was getting the message across, but I thought was a little much, were the naked, tan, fit men dancing around them and all over them while they proclaimed to want equal rights as women. I can see the point the women were trying to make with these dancing men, however, I think it leans a little too far in the other direction by doing the exact same thing as Thicke’s video. It seems like in the women’s quest to find equal rights, they need to put all men down and discourage them, claiming they all want the same