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Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Deb Gets Dirty


THAT’S MY GIRL

Further to my previous post bemoaning the social pressures that we Yummy Mummies face at the School-gate, I feel the need to again step in to defend my gender – or rather my adopted gender.

And in a superb demonstration of the Six Degrees of Separation principle, my new story has ‘everything’ - dealing as it does with New Media Freedom, Sexism, Auckland NZ, Robin Thicke, a raunchy ‘viral’ video clip and a link in the chain of my own Family History.

The ‘Law Review Girls’ of Auckland University Law School have gone down and dirty on Thicke’s “Blurred Lines”, which has received a right old hammering world-wide from the ladies.

Katie Russell from Rape Crisis has commented:

"Both the lyrics and the video seem to objectify and degrade women, using misogynistic language and imagery that many people would find not only distasteful or offensive but also really quite old fashioned.

"More disturbingly, certain lyrics are explicitly sexually violent and appear to reinforce victim-blaming rape myths, for example about women giving 'mixed signals' through their dress or behaviour, saying 'no' when they really mean 'yes' and so on."

So getting a few words [and actions] in edge ways is fair game.

One of the creators of the parody, Olivia Lubbock sets out its aims in the following terms:

"We think that women should be treated equally, and as part of that, we're trying to address the culture of objectifying women in music videos.”

The video was temporarily banned by YouTube, which of course has fired it up with a massive oxygen blast in the social media furnace, with 450,000 views in a few hours.

It shows men in their underwear with dog leashes around their necks being squirted with cream and having dollar bills stuffed into their pants, though it is keen to assert at its start that ‘No Men were Harmed in the Making of this Video’.

Speaking of the YouTube ban, Olivia has commented:  “It’s been flagged by users as inappropriate because of sexual content and stuff like that, but the fact it’s been taken down is a massive double standard.

“My opinion is that people don’t like the message behind it. It was meant to be a comedic sketch, but we’re trying to address the culture of objectifying women in music videos. We think that women should be treated equally.”

No complaints there.

And I am delighted to report that Olivia is a very remote family relative!

She is the grand-daughter of veteran and venerable social justice campaigner Eric Lubbock, Lord Avebury, a Lib-Dem Peer who sits in the UK House of Lords. I regularly follow Eric’s blog at:


And some years ago, after I became interested in Family History, Eric’s elder son Lyulph kindly sent me a family tree which contained, to my immense surprise, a reference to 'Harry Johnson marrying Constance Maud Mary Lubbock'.

So I have posted as my header a picture of ‘Our Darling Olivia’ on a less louche occasion with all her clothes on!

For more on the story and a link to the video, see:

 
For more on Lubbock Family History use the Search Engine in this Blog.

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