annoyedAs part of the thing that Miley did, however, she wound up grinding her backside (and, due to her position at the time, her genital region) against Robin Thicke's groin while wearing spanky pants made of what looked like flesh-colored vinyl. No one missed a beat when she did this, including Robin Thicke, so I have to assume that it was rehearsed, and was part of the plan for the performance. Again, still not a good thing, but she didn't start throwing in the over-the-top sexual stuff on a whim: MTV approved this. Her backup dancers learned this. Robin Thicke voluntarily did this.
I have now heard three separate people say something along the lines of "Robin Thicke's wife should slap the shit out of her," and "she should be ashamed." What I'm not seeing, though, are people saying the equivalent things about him. It appears that, to many people, Robin Thicke just materialized on stage as an innocent bystander, where Miley Cyrus proceeded to grind on him, and he didn't push her away because he's a gentleman.
I...wait.
I know this is a weird example to use, but bear with me here: this is actually a really good demonstration of how we tend to treat female "characters" in both real life (celebrities, pop stars, people whose lives are turned into narratives by the media) and fiction. Belle stole Brina's boyfriend! Sharon is a skank! Cassandra is a coward! It's always the women who are to blame, and the men around them are blameless. It's not "Brian left Brina for Belle." It's not "Sharon had consensual sex with Steve." It's not "Connor threatened Cassandra's life and family, so she withdrew." We place the full onus for anything we don't like on the female participants, leaving nothing for their counterparts. And it's just not fair.
Miley Cyrus did a thing. Very few people seem to have liked the thing, and that's on her: she should know her audience better than that. But Robin Thicke did not accidentally wander into the performance. If there's blame to give here, it needs to go both ways.
We need to drop the double standard.
August 26 2013, 18:47:47 UTC 3 years ago
But if Thicke's wife is supposed to want to slap the shit out of anyone, shouldn't it be him? He made the choice to be in that performance, he made the choice to make the video that the performance was referencing, and he made the choice to write the song that the video was made for.
And it's especially telling that people just assume that his wife would be upset by the performance (or the video) in the first place. I didn't know he was married (in fact I'd never even heard of him before I heard about the video), but I can't imagine anyone close to him is somehow unaware of his career. The jealous-wife get-away-from-my-man trope is just as much a part of the slut-shaming, just as much a part of the misogyny. Miley is presumed to have done something inappropriate with someone else's man; Thicke's wife is presumed to feel threatened with the fear of losing her man. Because as we all know, we're nothing without a man; we either have to have one and be trying to keep him, or be trying to get someone else's. Poor things are just pawns in our little games.
The whole thing is so gross.
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