Say You Like Me

Recently I've been learning about gender inequality in English. We learned about the language concerned with gender, and how the media uses language to further language stereotypes and gender inequality. There are so many examples of this: ads aimed at women versus ads aimed at men. Television portrayals of the different genders. The number of women in starring roles in blockbuster movies, compared to the number of men in starring roles. It's also obvious in music which we teens constantly listen to like our headphones are glued into our ears. Songs like Timber, Blurred Lines, and a few of Eminem's songs (the rapper, not the candy). These songs have blatant meanings and directly objectify women - songs that I don't usually listen to. After going through a unit on Language and Culture, though, I realised that gender inequality and objectification of women is a lot more subtle than lyrics talking about women being useful only for "doink doink doink" (Eminem's So Much Better). It's in the nuances of music videos, in what women wear, and in the stereotypes and biases we already carry around with us everywhere we go. An example of this is the newest We the Kings song: the catchy one, with the interactive music video. Say You Like Me. I’ve listened to it at least fifty times, and I can’t get tired of it. But then I showed it to my dad, and he blatantly said, “That objectifies girls.”

I stopped listening to the song because of a few (okay, a lot of) problems I have with it (now I probably have to stop listening to pop music for the rest of my life). The lyrics are the first problem: the songs starts off like this, “She's the girl that no one ever knows. And I say hi, but she's too shy to say hello.” It’s totally natural to be shy – but it’s the next line that annoys me: “She's just waiting for that one to take her hand and shake her up. I bet I could.” This line is basically saying that she’s actually just playing hard to get, and that to stop being shy, she needs a man to take her out. It’s also saying that it’s the girl who’s passively waiting for the guy to talk to her, passively waiting for any guy to “shake her up” (or rouse her from her apathy, which is the definition of shaking someone up). The next line, “I bet I could,” seems to be a direct challenge to the fact that maybe she doesn’t want to be shaken up by the guys. Maybe she just wants to be left alone.

The language of these two phrases are very subtle. When the guy suggests he is going to shake her up, it shows that he is going to do something with her or to her that will surprise or shock her, something that will rock her world. This is open to interpretation - but I'm pretty sure that the "something" he's hinting at is sexual. The phrase "I bet I could" is an expression of his masculinity and the typical competitiveness that males, according to society, are supposed to display. It's as if he's competing with other guys to win over the girl. This challenge to the girl and to other guys, although seemingly sweet, is very subtle. It's snaking into our consciousness, worming into our brains and telling us, Girls don't need to be strong or competitive. That's for guys. How many times have you felt this? How many professional, competitive sports teams do you know by name? How many are all-girl teams, and 

The chorus then continues to say, “I'm never gonna leave, so put your hands up. If you like me, then say you like me.” He’s asking the girl to surrender, because he’s never going to leave, regardless of whether she likes him or not. He’s also implying that she likes him, just that she doesn’t want to say it out loud. And behind this seemingly sweet message of the guy never going to give up on the girl, there’s also that sinister thought of him wanting the girl to surrender to his advances, instead of making her own decisions. It’s telling them that it’s adorable and chivalrous of a guy to keep chasing after them, so why not just wait for him instead of going out and fighting your own 

This also shows unrealistic depictions of love. Does the video really show what real relationships are? The girl isn't going to fall for the guy just for the reason that he likes her - there have to be other factors considered. One of these being her own opinion, which, gasp, actually exists. The phrase "fall into my arms" is one of those cliched phrases which are associated with damsels in distress and princesses being caught from danger of falling by their prince, or of a lady fainting and being caught by a man. You never say that a guy would be falling into someone's arms. This type of imagery is very subtle in the media, leading to a widespread view that women are weaker than men.

Combined with the video, it’s a powerful message. It starts off with a picture of the pretty girl with no name (which is totally normal, right?) with these words flashed across the screen: “the girl”. This seems to show that she's is pretty much replaceable by any other girl, and that she has a standard role in the plotline: the damsel in distress. She’s carried off in ropes by a bunch of bad guys, and it seems like she just submits to them kidnapping her instead of even making an effort to fight them off. The guys who kidnap her are caricatured and over-masculinised. The guys in the band then proceed to go through several stages of a video-game-like battle to get to the girl. The lead singer of the band fights with the kidnappers, and then the girl does the same, and beats her kidnapper up. But why didn’t she do that in the first place? It seems like a last-ditch effort to give the girl an actual role in the video.

Then the video ends with a kiss between the girl and the main man of the band.

Cliché? Totally.

Basically, the video is saying that the girl’s going to fall in love with the guy if he fights off some bad guys for her. Although, in real life, it doesn’t work that way. The girl barely talked to the guy, much less got to know him. In fact, the extent of their communication in the video was this: a smile at a café, untying the girl from a pole, then a kiss.

The girl has a role in the video, but really, it just shows her face and what she’s wearing. The video subtly suggests that the men in the video like the girl for what she looks like, not what interactions they havehad with her before. Not because of her personality. The band doesn’t even know her name, much less her values or intelligence level, and yet, because of her looks, they’re willing to go to great lengths to rescue her from the “bad guys”. This is another way the media penetrates your mind – it shows you that a girl needs good looks in order to get the guys. Nope, she doesn’t need a brain. Or a personality. Not even speech. She’s just there to be looked at, and this form of sexual objectification is degrading and permeates our society. 

The music video has over 2 million views on YouTube: it's a huge number for this subtle message to be distributed, and messages like this one are distributed globally, not just in the media. When girls are young, they receive toy cooking sets, dolls, and dress-up sets, which all prepare them for traditional roles of women like housewives and taking care of babies. It's more common to see guys playing with Lego, toy cars and action figures as well. There is nothing wrong with doing these things, it's just that it seems like the guys are sent out to do things in practical clothing (for example, fighting and resucing the girl) compared to the very passive role that girls are expected to take. The mass media does this everywhere: on average, a person sees 5,000 advertisements per day. How many of these do you actually remember? And how many of them sexually objectify women? How about TV shows you see? A recent study showed that women occupy on 14% of the top-grossing films in Hollywood every year. And although you have great films such as The Hunger Games and Maleficent which have incredible female protagonists, these films are largely outnumbered by movies which star males. What are the last ten movies you saw, and how many of them had a female in the lead role? All these contribute to the mindset that females aren't as good as males, that they don't have prominent roles in society, that they aren't as important as males.

Yeah. It’s catchy and interesting. But it’s also reinforcing the image that girls need guys to survive. I’m not saying it’s wrong to fall in love, or that it’s wrong for a guy to fight for someone he loves, but the media is perverting this image and showing us twisted representations of what love is. There’s more to us than our looks or our clothing.

Girls can fight – but usually, we don’t fight in three-inch heels. 


Link to lyrics: http://tinyurl.com/sayyoulikemelyrics