Blurred Lines on Blurred Lines

I consider myself a feminist, but I absolutely love the song "Blurred Lines." This is why.

Some broad strokes of my personal brand of feminism: I want to be paid equal money for equal work, and I want to be able to stay home and raise children without judgment if my partner and I decide that's what we want to do. I love the modern independence of owning a car and driving myself places unescorted, but I also thrill inside every time my boyfriend opens the car door for me. I'm pretty sure he doesn't open this door because he feels my weak feminine muscles are unsuited to the task of prying the masculine steel cover away from my my designated spot in the front seat. I'm pretty sure it's a gesture to make me feel cherished and special. If we lived in a time when he was expected to open the door for me, his chivalry would have communicated, "I am fulfilling my obligation of the social contract to be the workhorse in this relationship and protect you from unnecessary and uncustomary strain." But that's thankfully no longer our contract. Under the modern, chivalry-optional contract, opening the door is a way to say “I don't have to do this, but I want to make an extra effort to show my appreciation and admiration of you.” In terms of male “dominance” behaviors like door opening and meal buying, the fact that the behavior was once a symptom of a patriarchal institution doesn't disqualify it from being a legitimate, consensual choice any more than owning an analog watch disqualifies someone from owning a computer. Intentional anachronistic throwbacks don't necessarily mean that the weight of female oppression is implicit in them. When we choose to engage in these sort of “unfeminist” behaviors, we're not caving to shadows of the insidious patriarchy, rather, we're making informed choices and exercising our power of agency.

So how does this feminist backdrop make date rape songs ok? It doesn't. But my interpretation of this song is that it celebrates playful seduction that is caring, cooperative, and most importantly, consensual.

I can't deny that a rapey interpretation of “Blurred Lines” is entirely plausible. It features the dialog of a man trying to convince a woman to be more intimate than she is giving clear verbal cues about wanting to be. Reading his pleas as coercive certainly damns it to feminist hell, and rightly so. No one should be pressured into sexual activity, period. By this interpretation, the song is a pretty evil horseman of the women's rights apocalypse, end of story. But I have a hard time believing that that's the song's intent. If this is the real interpretation, then the bubble gum pop song Blurred Lines is essentially a college cheer, "Give me an R! Give me an A! Give me a P! And an E!" Clap, clap, clap! Hip, hip, hooray! Something so blatantly pro-pervy sex is an envelope-pusher far beyond the ambitions of Robin Thicke. This isn't gritty Eminem, exposing the hard knock life that kindled murderous feelings toward his mother, or dirty, raw Rihanna shocking us with her desire to get knocked around, or the Rolling Stones making us cringe at the pleasures of a plantation master's rape of slaves. Blurred Lines is a cotton candy confection, performed by a goofy doofus, not a Don Draper. I personally have a hard time just taking Robin Thicke and Pharell seriously enough to credit them with creating something intentionally so controversial.

When I first heard the song on the radio, minding my own business in the car, not having heard anything about the controversy, I got my groove on thinking the "blurred lines" were the fun lines between "good girl" and "bad girl," essentially the Hot Librarian trope (a personal favorite. See the author's glasses). For those of you from a foreign planet, the allure of the Hot Librarian is that the woman has a professional, competent, intelligent, and composed demeanor that the public sees, her asexual "good" side, and a fierce, sexual, animal "bad" side.

The real patriarchal stink that, bafflingly, no one seems to be outraged over, is that the song assumes women have to be asexual to be "good." Ironically this assumption seems fundamental to the whole misogyny interpretation of the song. When he sings “I know you want it, but you're a good girl,” people are up in arms that he arrogantly assumes she is hiding sexual desire from him, but not at all upset that “wanting it” and being a good girl are presented as contradictory. The rapey interpretation seems to have no problem concluding that if she's a good girl, then she doesn't want it, and therefore the singer must be coercing her.

Now here's where I'm pretty sure I'm taking the safety off a loaded gun and stuffing it into my pants: Imagine that maybe the object of affection actually does want sex with the singer in this song. Just for argument's sake, imagine that she's enjoying the benefit of having a powerful, professional female persona and playing with when to reveal her passionate animal lover persona. Imagine one step further that she's familiar with the singer and his feelings for her, and they have spent time together learning each other's nonverbal sexual cues. This context actually makes the opening lines an expression of concern for her feelings before it even attempts the seduction.

“If you can't hear what I'm trying to say/If you can't read from the same page/Maybe I'm going deaf/Maybe I'm going blind/Maybe I'm out of my mind”

In these opening lines, he's trying to make sure that they are on the “same page” and offering his own fallibility as reason that they might not be, “ I want to communicate clearly with you, and if we're not doing that, it might be my fault.” It's almost a disclaimer of sorts, “This coming business is real, and I want to make sure that we aren't miscommunicating.” Maybe my hopeful naivite just reads wildly optimistic, but I see it as an invitation to the woman to call him on shenanigans and join him as a partner, not a victim. He doesn't want to coerce her, he wants to be on the same page. He wants the playful flirting to be mutually understood and consented to.

The next lines:

“Now he was close/Tried to domesticate you/but you're an animal/baby it's in your nature/Just let me liberate you/You don't need no papers/That man is not your maker”

I'm assuming he is talking about the woman's previous lover/dance partner/boyfriend, one who didn't understand and appreciate her dual nature. It's a far cry from lyrical genius, but I still don't think it's coercion. The singer is trying to express an appreciation of the whole woman, not just the “tame,” “good” side. Even with this less-than-nuanced appeal to her to choose him, it's still putting the power in her hands. “Let me,” he asks and reminds her of her own power. He's not telling her how powerful and wild she is only take her agency away. He's offering up his admiration of her power and asking if he can assist her in her efforts to embrace it. And yes, I'm certain he's hoping to enjoy the results of her empowerment himself, but I think he enjoys the fact that it's the woman with power making the choice to involve him in using it.

The next verse:

“And that's why I'mma take a good girl/I know you want it (x3)/You're a good girl/Can't let it get past me/you're far from plastic/Talk about getting blasted/I hate these blurred lines/I know you want it (x3)/But you're a good girl/The way you grab me/must want to get nasty/Go ahead, get at me.”

He's going to take (as in partner with, not rape) a good girl, because he wants the complex woman with the dual nature. Could “I know you want it” be his satisfied observation of the sexually confident woman he admires, rather than an attempt at brainwashing her? The next line is another appreciative nod of this woman's true nature, “you're far from plastic” (again, not poetry). He likes his real woman in a world where perfect, plastic Barbie ones are easy to come by.

I can see how “Talk about getting blasted” followed by “I hate these blurred lines” could scream drunkenness and make the blurred lines the inability to tell if the woman is interested or not. This is the most compelling couplet for the rapey interpretation. But I still think the rest of the song makes more sense if we pair “talk about getting blasted” with the previous lines as part of the effect she has on him. He's drunk on her raw sexual power of attraction. When he tells her “The way you grab me, must want to get nasty” he's showcasing her agency and offering her a chance to embrace the “nasty” or the not-good-girl side. He is interpreting her sexual advances toward him (she did the grabbing), and inviting her to take action, but he never once suggests doing anything to her. Over and over in this song, he acknowledges that the woman is the one with the sexual power and he invites her to embrace it.

The next lines offer a stronger case for the “they knew each other already” argument:

“What do they make dreams for/When you got them jeans on?/What do we need steam for/You the hottest bitch in this place/I feel so lucky/You want to hug me/What rhymes with hug me?”

If this woman was someone he had just met and was trying to seduce for the first time, I can't imagine anyone being an idiot enough to use the term “bitch” with expectations of success. “Bitch” can be an empowering term if you use it about yourself or are invited to use it by someone else. We have all seen pop culture iterations of the following:

There's a pretty famous song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ivt_N2Zcts

I once had a friend who took great pride in being her husband's “best bitch.” Bitch in these contexts refers to a bold, powerful woman who knows what she wants and how to get it and won't take crap from anyone. While it can mean these empowering things, that's still a minority usage and I can't imagine anyone being an idiot enough to think someone they just met would find it complimentary. The relationship in this song has to be about people who are already intimately familiar with each other to use ironic terms of endearment.

He alludes to previous romantic interaction, “I feel so lucky you want to hug me,” which I think is much more likely a cute understatement about an established romantic partner than a manipulated a hug from of a relative stranger. As for “What rhymes with hug me?” I have nothing. I can only assume this line is just ... dumb.

As I've said before, the song is not a work of genius. But I don't think it's a work of misogyny either. I think its implications were not well thought before it was released, and it certainly could have used some more work on the branding strategy. But I think reading this song as a rape anthem actually removes the woman's agency and assumes a male-dominant sexual arena in which women are not supposed to want sex. It puts all of the power in men's hands, assuming that they are the only ones with agency, and that the females are just reacting. And yes, that's kind of the idea of rape, that it completely removes a woman's agency. But I like the reading of this that has her fully engaging in playful push-me-pull-you courtship. She has her “good” side and her “bad” side and leverages them as she likes in the game of seduction. Her dual nature is something to be appreciated

The big question is: where lies the burden of proof? Are we allowed interpret this song in what I feel is the feminist way in which this woman has agency and is in full control of this seduction, or does the existence of rape culture mean that by default we should interpret this song as coercive to eliminate the possibility of inadvertent approval of rape tactics? If my interpretation is correct, does it need proof? How would the woman's consent to this seduction be communicated? A surgeon general's warning at the beginning of the video? “The Surgeon General warns that the male and female in this song are engaged in a loving and committed relationship with a known history of nonverbal sexual consent.”

If the woman was playing a cat-and-mouse game and went so far as to actually refuse or even imply that she was not interested (as she does in “Baby It's Cold Outside,” which will have to be another essay), what then? Thankfully for this essay, this song doesn't actually have any evidence that the woman is disinterested—our only hint is that the singer is telling her “I know you want it,” which doesn't necessarily have to be a douchey frat boy line. But what if she actually did refuse and was playing? What would be an appropriate platform to honor this type of play in pop culture? Are we not allowed to have it until the patriarchy falls?

These questions I don't have the answers to. But I like being a Hot Librarian (or, more accurately, Hot Flight Attendant), I like being seduced and seducing, and I don't think I can wait for the end of the patriarchy to dance to this song.