By, Sissi D.
It has been a couple of weeks since the release of creative hit Motomami became available on all streaming platforms and I think we can finally begin to process it. An album very different from the things we are used to seeing from Spanish artist Rosalia, this album delivers odes to reggaeton mixed with ballads and sounds unlike her usual flamenco rooted work that shot her to fame three years ago. It was not only her new sound that surprised a lot of her fans but also the explicit nature of her lyrics that left very little to the imagination. The song that raised the most controversy for it use of explicit lyrics was “hentai” a song that about the desire of wanting to ride your boyfriend like a bike and the joy of ecstasy felt during sex. In a mixture of Spanish and English the young artist lays down her inhibitions and freely opens the conversation around what sex feels like to her and the pleasures around it. This caused an uproar from the moment it was released as many felt the song was too explicit for her audience with some fans calling for the return of the sound of the old Rosalia.
The question of whether Rosalia’s song was appropriate or not is, I think, missing the point of the real conversation here and that is why everyone is so concerned about the explicit nature of her music in the first place. Artists have the right to change their sound and their fans then have the choice to decide whether they want to keep listening to them, but what we saw in this situation instead was the rise of outrage from many people across social media. She was depicted as a sexually deviant, inappropriate, and bad influence for the youth. The outrage that she experienced singing about a topic so intimate like sex and her enjoyment of it is a prominent issue many female artists face when they about sex in their music. The ability to express themselves and their femininity in a way that is fit to them and not what is comfortable for society is always met with backlash. Everybody’s relationship with intimacy is different and in Rosalia’s case it is a topic she is comfortable sharing with her fans, but for people that is not enough of a reason. The issue of deciding whether to share their sexual life with their audience for fear of backlash is a non-existent issue for male artists as there is an acceptance and encouragement of men sharing their sexual experiences in the music industry. I mean it is so hard to find any popular song from a male artist that isn’t about sex, the female body, or filled with innuendos about it, yet there is never any backlash towards them. Instead, men thrive off of sharing their experiences and objectifying women in their music. The ability for men to talk so freely about the female body and sex while women can’t talk about those same things is telling of the views around femininity in society. It is okay for women to be the objects of sexualization but the line is drawn when women want to do the same with their own bodies whether that be in music or any other form of art.
This issue is not something new but one that has been raised time and time again as women continue to try to reclaim their sexuality from the men that have held ownership of it for so long. The third wave of feminism in the 90’s specifically was this movement from women that wanted to reclaim the derogatory terms and sexualization used towards them. It was one of many attempts to take back ownership of the taboos pushed upon us that women can’t talk about sex. In this song Rosalia is taking ownership of the conversation around sex by giving us a point of view not usually heard in mainstream music which is what women like and want from sex. There is still a lot of work that needs to be done in this area and in society itself for women to one day be able to sing about these things without the fear of being attacked for it. The step that Rosalia took by creating and sticking by a song not accepted by mainstream society is a step forward in an ever long road toward gender equality.