#its kesha rn and i think shes one of the people who would approve

[bubblesthewaterbender]

A journey (kind of rant ish?)

cw: sexy song lyrics, helicopter parents, sl*t shaming, specifically of a child who doesn't know what's going on

Okay so I'm actually at the point now where I think TikTok is pretty alright. It had some immediate detractors and that kind of rubbed off on me but for the most part it's come to be its own thing. So I found a TikTok compilation a little bit ago, which meant basically finding vines that I'd never seen before, just under a different name.

The very first one (here's the compilation btw)

Was a very specific joke about a song from the early-mid 2010's which meant I for sure listened to it a lot when it was popular. Turns out it was Hey Mama by David Guetta, and the line (yes I do the cooking, yes I do the cleaning, plus I keep the nana real sweet for your eating) was from Nicki Minaj. Standard 2014 faire.

(btw despite everything the song David Guetta later did with Nicki, Turn me On, is legit good and I have no clue why but it's easily one of my favorite songs by Guetta and that includes everything he did with Sia. But only if you go with the interpretation that the song is about a robot or alien. Or I have shit taste. Anyway not important).

So I forgot what the song was because it's been 5 years since I've thought about it (holy shit), so I looked up the lyric in question. In the process I found this amazing headline (the actual article sucks).

"what do I do when my four year old thinks a song about keeping your genitals tidy for visitors is a ditty about bananas?"

Why did I cry laughing at this headline? Was it because of how absolutely pure that is on the part of the kid? Was it because "for visitors"? Was it the mental image of a bunch of adults being like "oh okay so we have to listen to this for a while"? Nobody will know.

The actual article is not worth your time though. It's mostly this woman gasping and grabbing at pearls because her kid has misinterpreted lyrics that she wouldn't know the meaning of anyway and considering it a moral outcry, or even worse a failing on the kid's part? With great quotes such as:

"Dance music behemoth David Guetta’s “Hey Mama,” featuring the pornographic vocal stylings of Nicki Minaj, is decidedly not a song about motherhood. Actually, it might be a song about unintended eventual motherhood, but let’s leave that pee stick aside for now." (I can *smell* the tone behind the word "pornographic" there. Also, ew)

"The current speed of precocity is not a concern for [her husband I think] – even when he is reminded that as a child in the mid-1970s, he was still listening to “Purple People Eater” and tracks about meatballs when he was more than twice Bea’s age." (She doesn't know what it's actually about? You don't have to tell her - though frankly I'm one of those people who thinks that things like that should be normalized so shame doesn't happen later on - but it's not that much of a problem when she doesn't actually know)

"Mike and I had our children later than most of our friends. They all have nine- or 10-year-olds; some even have teenagers. When those kids happen to be girls, the main project, from what I can see, seems to be holding them back from the full catastrophe of adulthood, against the cultural tide that will have every female twerking and wearing plastic princess heels before they’ve learned to use a fork properly. When I recently asked a family member what I should buy his eight-year-old daughter for her birthday, he sighed and said, “She likes any clothes that look like they are for a very small prostitute.”" (there's been a lot of people online giving really different, very good takes about the way that kids, especially young girls, are dressed, but idk am I the only one who sees a problem with the people who respond to their kids reacting to what they consider to be mature media (and the kiddo sees as just,, what's popular) by /not/ telling them what's up with it? Kids are very understanding if you talk to them like humans, and if you tell them why you don't want them doing x thing, they'll probably be fine unless you demand or they really had their heart set. Shaming behind their back because they're just wanting to follow trends and don't know what any of it means is not okay. There's a full musical about why shaming instead of educating is such a bad thing, all parents should know the plot of Spring Awakening.) (Also I didn't know that heels were the sl*tty option? I just thought that it was a thing for women to wear for some reason that I never understand and for little girls to try on because they like pretending they're older. And they still don't know why you think this is a bad thing.)

This didn't mean to be a rant, I just realized that an article I died at was actually advocating for not getting what little girls like while also shaming them for what they like for, as far as they can see, no reason.