Spoiler! :
Immediately after being handed the essay, “Sexism in Rock and Roll Lyrics” by Rod Cohen, I opened it up and started reading. The title, though decidedly not the greatest title in the world, drew me in because of the mention of my favourite genre of music, rock. And I was not disappointed in the way that it was incredibly interesting, and brought up many different topics that made me think about society and how we as humans live in our current world.
For example, one of the main topics that this essay discusses is the portrayal of women in popular music lyrics, primarily classic rock and roll. Rod Cohen talks about how the songwriters demean and degrade women by the way they talk about relationships and various females that they have come in contact with; for example, he sums the song “Under My Thumb” by The Rolling Stones up as a song just about the male's need and wish to dominate his female mate, and have total control over her.
However, while this is all a valid point about there being examples of sexism and disrespect of women in these lyrics, the author fails to mention all the other forces in our society that are also degrading towards women, as well as promoting the idea that sex has no meaning in regards to an actual real relationship anymore.
For instance, a lot of the movies or TV shows lately have been mostly containing messages that everything is about sex and instant gratification. Take one of my favourite shows “How I Met Your Mother” for example. In this show, it revolves around the activities of a group of people who live in New York, told from the perspective of Ted, who is telling his children the story of how he met their mother. I've always enjoyed watching this show, because I've never really thought about what I was watching until reading this essay. However, now that I really look back, I see that through the whole series these characters are not role-models at all. All they do most of the time is drink, flaunt their sexual encounters and stay up most of the night, every single night. Not to mention, the one character named Barney is constantly trying to get another one night stand to add to his incredibly long list of people he has had sex with. Basically, they act like immature teenagers trying to play adult, despite the fact that they are all in their late twenties to early thirties. So really, what it all boils down to is the message that it is perfectly acceptable to be completely immature even if you are old enough to be able to be considered an adult and have sex with random strangers even if you're not in a committed relationship with them. Sex becomes nothing but a physical deed, all its spiritual meaning has been lost.
And then we also see these types of messages being thrown around all over our current pop culture; in books, celebrity “idol” lives, all types of music (especially rap and hip-hop), even in some of our news reports. These messages are everywhere all the time.
But, not only do these media messages affect how our society views sex, they also affect how people treat each other. Some people, after being bombarded by all these messages from the media, will begin to think that everyone is like the people they see portrayed. Men start to think that all women are willing to give themselves away to anyone, so they treat them according to their perceptions of them. And when they meet someone who refuses to conform to said social “norm”, they label them as a loser or a prude because they are modest and still have their morals intact.
However, it doesn't only affect the male population. It also makes women feel incredibly pressured to be like the women they see in the media, because they begin to think that you have to dress and act that way to be liked. They think that how the women on television and in magazines look that way naturally, are that thin naturally, and dress that way because it's how all women are supposed to look. Women start to think that there's something wrong with them if they don't have a model-thin body, so they do things like starving themselves to try to become just as thin and “beautiful” as the women put on display. They believe that if they do not do this, they won't fit in with the other people in the world, so they copy what they believe to be what everyone sees as beautiful.
And then this can be linked back to what I was saying about how people are beginning to view sex. Women become less modest, as well as freer with their morals. They will be more willing to dress and act provocatively just to get attention.
Say, if you take a look back about a hundred to a hundred and fifty years, you can see how drastically our society has changed in respect to how we treat things like sex. You could barely touch each other back then before you were either engaged or married, and sex was something you saved for within the promise of marriage, not something that was talked about all the time in regular society. I'm not saying that it wasn't heard of to have women who prostituted themselves, or men who would treat women like prostitutes, but those people were considered the lowest of the low. They were the scum of the earth back then, and now it seems like that behaviour is almost accepted. Sure, they don't accept it in the way that it's something that you see everyday on your way home from school or work, but it's something that people have accepted as a part of society.
One thing that is especially prominent in our society are places like strip clubs. These places are seen as everyday businesses that it's perfectly okay to go to, even though what people go to them to see is women strip naked for a room of complete and utter strangers for money.
But is that right? Is it okay for people to accept this prostitution and the drastic change in how we view sex? Is that what God wants us to do?
With the messages that we are constantly being tossed our way from movies, TV, music, even books, it would seem that our society would lean towards saying that this all is right and okay. People have accepted that this all is normal, and there doesn't seem to be any way to go back to the way that it was. We're stuck with this morphing image of what sex is, and how we should treat it.
God called us to abstain from sexual immorality, which is what this all is. We were called to treat our sexuality as a gift meant to be shared between two people who are committed to each other.
So now, what everyone really needs to do is just take a time out, and think about how they're acting. We all need to think about what we're listening to, reading and watching, and think about whether it really supports God's wish and plan for us.
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