Sex and Female Pleasure in Pop Music
*Sadly there were too many songs in this piece to embed all of them, so I did my best to at least link to all the songs mentioned
There are lots of songs about sex. And tons and tons of songs about men having sex (typically with women) and getting off. Songs like “Shook Me All Night Long” by AC/DC and “I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight” by Cutting Crew aren’t even pretending to be subtle about it.
Yet what about songs about female pleasure? There don’t seem to be a whole lot of them. The main ones that come to mind are “Rebel Yell” by Billy Idol, and “2 Become 1” by the Spice Girls. Uptown Funk by Mark Ronson ft Bruno Mars delves into it but in a very braggadocious way – it’s more about the man’s prowess than the woman’s enjoyment (Girls hit your hallelujah/Cause Uptown Funk gonna give it to ya). There is also arguably “I Touch Myself” by Divinyls - not exactly a subtle song but also technically about masturbation, not sex.
“Naked” by the Spice Girls probably counts – but if you read the lyrics there is a thread of slut-shaming in there, just like there is in the song “Addicted to Love” by Robert Palmer. It’s about women enjoying themselves but still hinting that women doing so isn’t totally ok.
The question/rebuttal, of course, is “these are just random songs, who cares? No one really listens to the lyrics anyways.” Which isn’t entirely unfair. I’m also making some pretty big claims based on the small sample size of the music I listen to. And it’s not like I don’t enjoy these songs – I do. I love pop music, and plenty of songs that are, quite frankly, outright misogynistic (mostly from old musicals - I blame Howard Keel’s amazing voice).
But at the same time, songs, like all parts of pop culture, both reflect and reinforce what we, as a society, value in the real world. Pop music is especially important in this context because it hits the widest audience, and thus has more influence on society than some obscure band only a few people listen to.
The overwhelming focus on the male side of sex, and male enjoyment of sex ignores half the population. It’s pretty damning that that the 1991 Salt ‘N Pepa song “Let’s Talk about Sex” – an open, frank song about the pros and cons of sex - has the line “I mean, everybody should be makin' love/Come on, how many guys you know make love?” It doesn’t even mention women actively enjoying sex.
Ignoring something is a way of saying it doesn’t matter. And the overwhelming focus of songs about sex on men – male pleasure and desire – says to society that female pleasure isn’t important. Or at the very least, that it is less important than male pleasure. And while I don’t think that this aspect of pop music necessarily perpetuates rape culture, it probably doesn’t help either.
If “music be the food of love” as Shakespeare wrote in The Twelfth Night, then our music is doing a poor job of supporting women in that concept. Sex should always be an “everyone wins” situation. Ignoring female pleasure and sexual desire in pop music undermines that by effectively saying “well, it’s more important that the guy gets something out of it.” And that is a worrisome attitude to say the least.
At the end of the day, no one song is to blame for this. But taken collectively, it there appears to be a norm in pop music that glorifies male pleasure and under-represents or ignores female pleasure. Norms like that are what culture is built on. It’s the metaphorical water in which we swim. So we must look at it, closely and seriously, to see what messages we are sending ourselves. Even when it’s something as simple as a pop song about having sex.
