Think about the first time you heard the song “Blurred Lines.” The first time I heard it, I was in the car with my dad and my sister on the way to Virginia, and it was the most uncomfortable three minutes of my life. I sat there in silence and looked out the window until it was over. After hearing the song on the radio about 30,000 times, I finally understand what the song is about — a “good girl” who’s “too afraid” to be “wild,” and Mr. Thicke knows that she “wants it.”
The lyrics in the song would make anybody uneasy. The “blurred lines” Thicke keeps referencing are indeed the blurred lines of consent.
Realistic scenario: You and your six-year-old brother are in the car and “Blurred Lines” plays on the radio. You turn the song up and you both jam out for approximately three minutes. In those three minutes, the song, as well as the lyrics, settle into your little brother’s mind. Flash-forward twenty years. Your brother goes out to the club with his friends. He’s twenty-six years old, so he chooses to indulge in a variety of alcoholic beverages until he is heavily intoxicated. He meets a girl who’s about his age, and they begin to dance. The lyrics of “Blurred Lines,” the song he heard twenty years ago, still exist in his subconscious memory. The girl is unwilling to engage in any sexual activity, but the drinks she has consumed have “blurred” her lines of consent. Your brother takes the girl home with him and pressures her into sex, even though she resists. She wakes up in the morning feeling miserable. Your little brother has just raped her. The song he heard twenty years ago did not tell him that rape is wrong and that rape culture is a real thing.
I decided to do a blind test with a male and a female – both teenagers of the same age and same social standing.
Taylor Knox, a senior at Bob Jones, said, “I think the beat is catchy, but the lyrics are sort of troubling. I feel as though Robin Thicke himself is taking advantage of me!”
Devin Geick, another seventeen-year-old senior at Bob Jones, said, “The lyrics are trashy, and it sounds like date rape to me. It seems like Robin Thicke is a narcissistic man that looks too old to be going to a club of any sort except for bingo club. Is there a bingo club? Anyway the song is overplayed and it sounds like a bad 80s record. No, thank you.”
Robin Thicke recently said in interviews that, “We’re three married men! It’s just a joke.”
Rape isn’t funny, and unbeknownst to Mr. Thicke, he’s adding to the heavy stream of rape culture in the media. It’s almost like society is rewarding him and giving him gold stars, because the song has been topping the charts for weeks. In all honesty, even if the song was intended as a “joke,” nobody can control how people will react to it. The lyrics do promote rape culture, and if we allow this to continue, we’re hurting ourselves by raising the next generation to be rapists, misogynists and cat-callers.
This song may be dubbed as “the summer anthem,” but maybe we should act as the group of responsible, respectful individuals we are and skip to the next song.
