Dear Alanis Morissette, Sorry We Normalized Your Rape

What did you think “Hands Clean” was about?

Photo By Walt Disney Television on Flickr.com

Alanis Morissette has always been known for her strong, sometimes rageful, and always-feminist voice. It made her famous. But being well-known doesn’t mean people will listen to you. Even when you’re calling out sexual assault.

Here’s how blind we are to sexual harassment: A song about a child being groomed floated on Billboard’s Top 40 for months and we didn’t even bat an eye.

The Real Meaning of Hands Clean

As a teenager, I played Hands Clean on repeat on my hour-long school bus ride. I thought it was romantic. I envisioned my teenage self with someone older and less crusty than the high school boys.

After a while, I started really listened to the lyrics. They didn’t sound right, so I Googled them.

You’re essentially an employee and I like you having to depend on me

You’re a kind of protégé, and one day, you’ll say you learned all you know from me and

And I know you depend on me like a young thing would to a guardian

I know you sexualize me like a young thing would, and I think I like ya

And the heartbreaking lyrics sang before the deceivingly rhythmic yet horrifying chorus:

Ooh, this could be messy

But you don’t seem to mind, and

Ooh, don’t go telling everybody

And overlook this supposed crime

Eventually, Morissette did go telling everybody. And everybody overlooked it. Even when it was right in front of us.

Just make sure you don’t tell on me, especially to members of your family

We best keep this to ourselves and not tell any members of our inner posse

I wish I could tell the world

’Cause you’re such a pretty thing when you’re done up properly

I might want to marry you one day if you watch that weight and keep your firm body

This just sounds bad. But it gets worse when you find out she was about 14 when the situation she wrote about took place.

In 2002, a New York Times article opened by describing Hands Clean as Morissette looking back on “a relationship.” This is despite acknowledging just two paragraphs later that it’s about statutory rape and sexual exploitation.

A manager who was on the team that released Hand Clean didn’t think much either, despite the glaringly obvious lyrics.

‘’We didn’t take it for any more than that it’s a beautiful melodic song,” he told the newspaper at the time. It was written off as a relationship with an older man.

In the article, the journalist portrayed the advances made toward Morissette as “hard to resist,” as they often are for young women in the industry. Notably, nothing was mentioned about how some older men find it “hard to resist” being a workplace predator.

After the singer spoke out about the mistreatment of women in the music industry, nothing changed. #MeToo happened. Not a lot changed. Although Morissette came forward, she gets why people still don’t, even after the movement.

“At best, it’s swept under the rug,” she told The Sunday Times just last year, echoing the lyrics in her 2002 hit single.

Our Role in Normalizing Sexual Harassment and Violence

We don’t need to be perpetrators of sexual harassment to perpetuate the normalization of it.

Many who sung along to Hands Clean didn’t understand the story behind it. Those that did shrugged it off because that’s the industry.

After Weinstein, maybe we understand sexual harassment with respect to the “casting couch.” But we’ve barely touched on it in other entertainment industries yet — even Morissette agrees.

Just a year ago, she was still forecasting a reckoning for the music industry, saying nearly every woman has endured some form of sexual mistreatment. We aren’t there yet.

Normalizing Industry-Specific Sexual Harassment

While we’re talking about workplace sexual harassment, what about those less glamorous, day-to-day jobs? Are you still making passes at your bartenders? At those you manage? Are you still making excuses when a woman points out her discomfort?

Working in the bar and restaurant industry for years, I can say I’ve both received and normalized sexual harassment.

One time, I worked with a young woman named Emma. She kept getting inappropriate comments from the chef, Dick. Everyone knew about Dick and his creepiness because Emma didn’t keep it a secret. When I started working, Emma warned me about him.

Some viewed Emma as young and naive. Someone who had overprotective parents and that’s why her standard for the world was so high. I bought into this cop-out too.

She’s 18, she hasn’t learned to let the sexual comments roll off her back yet, I thought. Clearly, this was her first restaurant job. Worrying about a chef’s comments was a symptom of her being young — not those of being in an unsafe world.

Eventually, Dick made disturbing comments to me too. If I went into anaphylactic shock because of my peanut allergy, it wouldn’t be so bad, he said. At least he could give me mouth to mouth resuscitation.

Emma was young but she wasn’t naive. She just refused to normalize the culture of sexual harassment. She stood up for herself and warned others.

Stop Ignoring Call-Outs

When I made Dick’s comments known, he got “talked to,” but nothing really happened.

Being in the #MeToo era, I was awarded this small grace of “a stern talking to.” It was still much more than what Morissette got.

When our experiences are ignored, we start to question them.

In the 11-year-old New York Times article, Morissette adopted the language of those around her. She preferred to describe her experience as, “someone that I was romantically linked to at a time when I was emotionally not necessarily prepared for it.”

Today, her summary of the song is much shorter: “That’s the story of rape, basically,” she told Self magazine.

After years in a top industry for sexual harassment, I, too reframed the comments made against me as, well, comments. I’m trying to break this habit. We can’t afford to keep normalizing mistreatment.

There are so many women like Morissette whom we owe an apology and gratitude for risking themselves to speak up.

A 2018 report found that 38% of women experienced sexual harassment in the workplace. When we broaden it to any type of sexual mistreatment, a disturbing 81% would raise their hands. Out of these, only 10% filed an official report.

We can’t leave it to victims to stand up for themselves. We can’t continue turning away and making excuses. We can’t keep saying “it’s not okay, but it’s okay here.”

When we don’t call out sexual harassment, we normalize it. When we ignore people who call out sexual harassment, we normalize it.

From now on — in the words of Morissette — our histories shouldn’t be “reinvented and under the rug swept.”