2023-12-07 23:29:50
“I’m in love with four babies. They always give me what I want. Chingan when I tell them. No one says but.” When Maluma released the song in 2016 Four babies, to whose chorus the previous lines belong, controversy broke out. The song and its video clip were accused of being “absolutely degrading to the female gender.” It was not the first nor was it the last sexist lyric by the Colombian singer. Two years earlier, in Point, had cried: “Excessive sex never hurts. She gets on all fours and asks me to punish her for the ‘ch’.
Bad Bunny and Rauw Alejandro’s lyrics highlighted in a campaign against sexual violence
But let’s not fool ourselves, Maluma was not the inventor of sexist compositions, nor will he go down in the history of music as the last exponent to sneak into the charts by perpetuating and normalizing misogynistic content. Many more have followed him.
February 2023. Bad Bunny publishes See you along with the rapper Arcángel, who prays: “I spit in your mouth, I noble hair. I give you the bug and the today on the private jet, a fuck in the sky. Today I want a whore, a model.” November of the same year. The Puerto Rican, who has been the second most listened to artist on Spotify in the world and the first in Spain of the year, sings in his single Monaco: “Let the stewardess suck your bug in the sky. Which e’throw five hundred’ in the whorehouse That’s why your opinion matters to me zero.”
Rauw Alejandro continues the same path, occupying fifth place in the ranking of most reproduced artists in our country. Floodone of the songs from his album Saturn which was released last July, stated: “Punish her, give her what she asks for. ‘We are in the area where nothing is prohibited. Hit it hard so you never forget. “Punish her, punish her.” The three reggaeton songs were highlighted a few weeks ago by the campaign launched by the Young Women Federation, to raise awareness about the violence suffered by women in their nightlife. Now: What does it mean that these types of lyrics continue to spread, that they are shouted and danced to every night in so many nightclubs, and that they are injected through the headphones of millions of people – many of them young – every day?
“It is worrying that at this point, and after years of talking about this issue, it continues to happen. Even through artists who were supposed to have cleaned up their ideology and image, and continue to fall into writing and interpreting lyrics that no longer perpetuate machismo in general, but physical and sexual violence,” Almudena Heredero, president of the Association, told this newspaper. of Women in the Music Industry (MIM), which emphasizes that these are verses that leave no room for misunderstanding due to how explicit they are: “They are clearly violent against women.”
????Violence and misogyny are reproduced in our daily lives and become invisible, shaping our discourse and vision of the world.
????Let’s become aware and question the speeches that build our imagination.#SafeNightsForAll#HacerVisibleLoInvisible pic.twitter.com/r6BoqUnGVw
— Young Women Federation (@MujeresJovenesF) November 22, 2023
Begonya Enguix, professor of Social Anthropology at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, criticizes those who sing this type of songs before elDiario.es “because they have the social responsibility of transmitting another message, one that is not sexist or sexualized use of the woman who should be at the complete disposal of man. They are proposing non-egalitarian and non-consensual relationships. “Quite the opposite of what the legal and social framework proposes.” The expert points out the example of Bad Bunny as striking because he is a singer who “makes many gender references. He’s not a 100% macho guy all the time. That’s why he generates even more shock “That precisely a person who is not a traditional machirulo has such sexist and violent lyrics.”
Even so, he does not attribute to the artists all the responsibility for what they sing in their songs. On a round trip, he comments that they are compositions that reflect a society that is “macho and sexist, and that continues to objectify women.” The psychologist postulates along the same lines Amparo Calandínwhich already warned in an article about the impact that this type of music has on young people, when valuing the inherent importance of music: “Its messages influence how we receive them and how we feel identified with them in our lives. And above all, they influence us to normalize and define what is correct, or what a society is experiencing at a given moment.”
Specifically, he explains that in young people it is more pressing due to their age, given that “the rational part of the brain, the one that judges and is most critical, does not fully develop until the age of 20.” Of course, he warns that this is a problem that goes further: “If you are feeling identified with these sexist lyrics, it is because you agree with those values and are the ones who are practicing them in your daily life, and the only thing that these do songs is to normalize it.” For the psychologist, the fact that there are those who continue these “behavioral patterns is modifying the society of the present and the future.”
A problem not only of reggaeton
The lyrics presented in this article belong to reggaeton, but the problem is not limited to this genre alone. Almudena Heredero insists that it is not the only type of music that deserves a review. “There is indeed a problem with reggaeton that perpetuates sexist, heteropatriarchal and violent messages. But why not focus on other musical styles? It is not only because it is sung in Spanish and the lyrics are understood, but also because it is associated with a specific geographical and social origin. Blaming reggaeton as the only problem is not fair,” says the president of MIM.
Begonya Enguix looks back on history and explains that “when analyzing music as an instrument of cultural transmission, virtually no period is blameless.” And she proposes as the first example of this “how the ideal of romantic love has been conceptualized,” since she warns that, misunderstood, “it can function as the subordination of women to men.”
“There are examples in rock and pop. If you search on the internet there are thousands of examples of songs by the most unexpected artists that are deeply violent and sexist. It is not about making a blacklist but we have to be very aware of what we have around us in all areas. And to put that focus in all areas, because there is a structural problem within the music industry and society. These kinds of things are not only heard in music, but also in statements by politicians. We are experiencing real atrocities,” adds Heredero, expanding the borders of the problem.
The president of MIM reminds that the responsibility should not fall solely on the artists, since they are not the only ones who dominate the industry. Hence, she highlights the need for more women in positions of power both on and behind the scenes. “At the moment when they are in charge of the record labels, the festivals and the music offices management“Everything is going to be looked at more carefully,” says the former director of Primavera Sound Madrid held last summer. “There have already been festivals, which are a good showcase to look at parity issues, which are taking steps forward,” she says.
Censorship is not the solution
Sexist lyrics still exist, but what is the way to eradicate them? “The politics of cancellation is deeply dangerous, and precisely because of that danger we do not have to go towards censorship, but towards visibility,” argues the president of MIM. Professor Begonya Enguix has a similar opinion, since she remembers that “freedom of expression is a characteristic element of democratic society that we should not easily renounce. Also: Who would set the limits? For the teacher, emphasis should be placed on “implementing mechanisms, especially educational, so that people know how to distinguish. To build a healthy society, we must give critical tools to the population.”
“It is very good that there are campaigns like that of the Young Women’s Federation because they bring out the colors of those who have to take it out. With the controversy in 2016 over Maluma’s lyrics, there were those who stopped to think about it. It is necessary that the negative be made visible, but even more so that the positive be made visible,” says Heredero, who vindicates feminist names in reggaeton such as Villano Antillano and Tokischa for demonstrating that this genre “can be an element of freedom, liberation and of making other realities visible.”
They are part of the group of female artists who “are doing a lot and very strongly to show that reggaeton goes far beyond sexist figures. Don’t let them appropriate it.” The president of MIM takes the opportunity to defend that, given the criticism that singers like Aitana have received, who was accused of hypersexualizing minors for dancing sexy in her concerts: “Women are owners of our bodies.”
“If a woman as an artist freely decides to show herself in a certain way, dance in a certain way or write a certain type of lyrics without being pressured by anyone, she should be absolutely free to do so. It is important that they empower themselves in terms of their physique, how to show themselves and that they are the ones who set the limits on it. It does not have to be imposed on them how far they have to teach or how far a dance is or is not explicit. There, reggaeton is a space of freedom that many women have occupied,” she says.
Understanding music as a reflection of what happens in society, the president of MIM advocates for a future that does not contemplate taking steps backwards, claiming: “Our life is closely linked to what we listen to. That this intimacy is linked to social and cultural advances; and not with dandruff.”
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