What’s Meghan Trainor Shaming Us For This Time?
If only the thicker-than-your-average pop star was actually sex-positive and pro-woman
This week, perky pop star Meghan Trainor released her third video — after megahit “All About That Bass” and almost-as-mega-hit “Lips Are Movin” — titled “Dear Future Husband.”
The three minute clip features Trainor, clad as a jazzed up 50s housewife, detailing a list of demands for a potential suitor (while simultaneously, oddly, browsing dating app Plenty of Fish in a particularly glaring product placement).
For Trainor, who is 21, this nostalgic walk down the 1950s landscape of picket fences and pencil skirts exists as pure fantasy. In 2015, with female pop stars readily reclaiming sexual expression and empowering themselves through anthems free from male approval, do we really need Meghan Trainor’s ode to chivalry and “tee-hee” chastity?
I’m not so naive to think that this isn’t all carefully crafted marketing strategy from her major label team at Epic. It’s working, by the way — the video for body positive (or ‘bass’ positive, at least) anthem “All About That Bass” has over 600 million views, and the ‘all men are liars’ jam “Lips Are Movin” has over 180 million. Clearly, taking some sort of gendered stance and mixing that with a little friendly controversy (to get keyboards aflame with dissenting takes) is a formula that works.
And sure, on the surface, her message is fine. It’s very “Go girl! Men will tell you you’re not skinny enough and lie to you, but we’re all in it together!” This new video, though, barely even attempts to put up that type of chipper facade.
“Dear Future Husband” features Trainor on the kitchen floor, curves accentuated in a skirt and heels, scrubbing with yellow gloves while sporting red lipstick. The overarching theme of the song is that Trainor will not sleep with her husband unless he meets her (very specific and frequently material) demands. Which, okay, yes, don’t sleep with someone that treats you poorly, but really, maybe just don’t hold sex as a bargaining chip.
Trainor kicks her heels on a bed, flanked by fit, young men (I guess the ‘it’s okay to be a little bigger’ message only applies if you’re a girl, right?) and rattles off a list of the usuals — flowers, jewelry, and doors held open.
The most alarming lyric, though, comes while Trainor is splayed (so ridiculously — take your freaking heels off, christ) on the kitchen tiles, saying with just as much of a chipper wink as the rest of the song
“After every fight / Just apologize /
And maybe then I’ll let you try and rock my body right.”
Wow, what?!
Trainor is speaking to her ideal future life partner here — she expects the two of them to fight, and subsequently for her to await an apology from her male counterpart before letting him “try” to sleep with her. It’s 2015, Meghan! Sex is a consensual, empowering, and even (shockingly, it seems) pleasurable act for women. It’s not your collateral to coax your husband onto a slick chivalrous knee, nor is it a healthy attitude to preach to any woman listening along.
Yet Trainor seems to treat her body as currency throughout her music, chirping:
“I’ll be sleeping on the left side of the bed /
Open doors for me and you might get some… kisses”
…replacing the implied rhyming euphemism for fellatio with a much more radio friendly smooch. Trainor is assuredly chaste, but willing to trade her feminine gifts for princess treatment. By ascribing a value to her body that is only referential in the eyes of men, Trainor teaches the listener to void their own parts of pleasure and engage in a transaction with their partner. Trainor seems to preach that a woman can trick her man into treating her with respect by collateralizing his uncontrollable animal desires. She simultaneously paints the man as brute and the woman as pseudo-savvy pristine merchant.
This is an ethos that seems to follow Trainor out of her pastel fantasy videos and into real life. She’s professed that she doesn’t consider herself a feminist, and that she’s saving a glimpse at her booty for whoever ‘gets’ to date her. Trainor, however, unlike most popstars, plays a real role in writing her own songs. She was a writer by trade for country singers before taking “All About That Bass” on as a single after being unable to place it with another artist. This is what makes her flippant, outdated sexism so dangerous — she seems to truly believe it.
Which is a shame, really, because it would be so amazing to have a thicker-than-your-average pop star who was actually sex-positive and pro-woman. Instead, Trainor paints the ‘classic and classy’ woman as materialistic, pure, and decidedly adherent to the male gaze. Trainor’s fantasy is one of a holier-than-thou housewife who doesn’t derive pleasure from carnal activities but barters them to train her unaware husband. She preserves her sex as a precious gift to be wooed with rings given, doors held open, and flowers bestowed.
Hopefully, Meghan will come to realize that she’s been siding on the wrong side of history, but in the meantime: Dear Meghan Trainor’s future husband, find someone who will treat you with a little more respect.
