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Wakey-wakey people! I bet you are all still in bed living your Sunday hangover. Because, as our friend Taio Cruz sings “I got a little bit trashed last night, I got a little bit wasted, yeah yeah”. That’s fine, at least you had fun, I hope!

I am 100% sure that most of you have gone crazy yesterday night at your favourite club (or at least once in your life time) dancing and singing “Sexy Bitch” of David Guetta & Akon.

I remember me and my best friend from Erasmus going crazy when this music was starting, pointing at each other and yelling “Damn, you’s a sexy bitch!”

But now, how many of you have actually thought about the lyrics? I’ve never cared about it: I like it, I sing it, I go crazy. Until yesterday night when at the corner shop next to my house (fun Saturday night as you can see!) this music started playing and the lady at the cash changed the radio channel, saying “it’s been ten years and they are still allowing this sexist song to play”. On my way back home, I started thinking about those words and I spent the whole night analysing the lyrics.

I found out that, actually, when we listen to music for leisure, we don’t pay attention to many qualities and features as we do when we approach it for purposes of analysis.

If we analyse it a bit, maybe we are not going to look at it with the same eyes (or with the same ears) ever again.

Let’s have a look at the first bit:

Yes I can see her

Cause every girl in here wanna be her

Oh she’s a diva

I feel the same and I wanna meet her

How nice is that! He saw a girl and he wants to meet her. The second and the third lines suggest that this girl is very beautiful and popular. Very romantic. Well done Mr David, that’s a good first step!

They say she low down

It’s just a rumor and I don’t believe em

They say she needs to slow down

The baddest thing around town

Now he’s saying that there are rumours about this girl. She needs to slow down? The worst thing around the town? Oh well my dear, apparently you are beautiful, popular and a sl*t too. But is that the right way to refer to a girl, Mr David? Excuse me mate, but you are calling her “thing”! Let’s go further…

She’s nothing like a girl you’ve ever seen before

Nothing you can compare to your neighborhood whore

I’m trying to find the words to describe this girl without being disrespectful

The way that booty movin’ I can’t take no more

Have to stop what I’m doin’ so I can pull up close

I’m trying to find the words to describe this girl without being disrespectful

Damn girl

Damn you’se a sexy bitch

A sexy bitch

Damn you’se a sexy bitch

Dam girl

In the third line, why is it hard to describe a girl without being disrespectful? Plus, she has already been labelled as “whore”, so how can you be any more disrespectful? Oh, there you go: “sexy bitch”., repeated more times throughout the song, which is also the title.

The girl described is objectivated. This means that she is represented through a single feature, which is “bitch”. In this way the narrator/author has the power to let us see the world through his eyes.

But what does the word “bitch” mean? A “bitch,” as most English speakers know, is a female dog. Calling someone a bitch used to be pretty straightforward, but today, after many adaptations and reinventions, it’s not totally clear what “bitch” really means anymore. Come on, we have all said to our BFF at least once “Hey bitch, how are ya doing?”. Also, unlike words like “sh*t” and “f*ck,” “bitch” is not covered by the Federal Communications Commission’s guidelines on obscene, indecent, and profane language. Does it mean that calling a woman a “bitch” is not only socially acceptable, but also normal and, let’s say, funny? Essentially, by allowing “bitch”, the FCC exposes people and children to the idea that it is OK to degrade women. But let’s go back to the past for a sec: the use of the word “bitch” to refer to women dates back to the 1400s to identify women who were worse than prostitutes (an allusion to the fact that female dogs have so many puppies) because at least prostitutes did whatever they did to gain financially. Also, the term “bitch,” applied to women, leads us to think that the word was trying to suppress those images of women as powerful and divine to end up equating them with sexually depraved beasts. Nowadays the term “bitch” is used also as a generic noun, for example if we say: “I bent that test over and made it my bitch.” The test may have presented some difficulty, but we controlled it and we feel like we have done well. Therefore, the “bitch” is something (meant to be) dominated and conquered.

So, I allow myself to come to the conclusion that the song is definitely sexist. You are still not convinced?

What if I tell you that music is sometimes an authentic expression of the soul and it can also indicate certain individual dispositions?! This is quite worrying, isn’t it? With songs lyrics artists are not only telling us stories, but they are also exposing part of their identity, even if some lyrics don’t make much sense to us. Does it mean that in this case the authors actually see women as sexual objects? It might be that “the singers/writers hold contradictory views about women, men and sexuality. These contradictions enable them to simultaneously claim to ‘like women’, even to put them on a pedestal, to celebrate femininity, whilst at the same time seeing women as existing purely as sexual objects whose primary purpose is to satisfy men’s sexual impulses”.

What do you think? Have you now changed your mind about this song? Will you still dance like crazy when you will hear it in a club?

Share your answers and have an amazing Sunday-Funday!

Hyperlinks

Image 1 of David Guetta retrieved from Google Images https://www.omnialyrics.it/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/98008.jpg

Hangover – Taio Cruz (lyrics). (2011). Retrieved from You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADmFdRMzVQQ

David Guetta feat. Akon – Sexy Bitch | Lyrics on Screen. (2011). Retrieved from YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2QYpe2VUQw

References

Abbott, D. (2010). David Guetta/Akon. Retrieved from https://www.tutor2u.net/sociology/blog/david-guetta-akon

Kleinman, S., Ezzell, M., & Frost C. (2009). Reclaiming Critical Analysis: The Social Harms of “Bitch”. Sociological Analysis, 3(1), 47-68. Retrieved from https://www.jmu.edu/socanth/sociology/wm_library/Ezzell.Reclaiming_Critical_Analysis.pdf

Machin, D. (2010). Analysing popular music: Image, sound and text. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com

Pardes, A. (2014). The Evolution of the Bitch. Retrieved from https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/ppmx3m/the-evolution-of-the-bitch-905

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