As some may be aware, universities around the UK such as Edinburgh, Derby, Leeds, Kingston and West Scotland have banned Robin Thicke's ultimate chart topper from their nightclubs.
The song is one of the most successful songs of 2013 and with it, has received a lot of controversial press attention. This includes its raunchy video with all the ladies dancing around topless to Thicke and Miley Cyrus collaboration at the VMAs, which resulted a massive focus towards Cyrus's 'twerking' skills.
SU presidents have obviously supported the move. University of Derby's Hollie O'Connor said in the press that the song 'hugely objectifies women and excuses rape culture...it is man suggesting that there are 'blurred lines' when it comes to sexual consent and that is unacceptable.'
However will banning a song like this really disprove lad culture, and trying to stamp out de-moralising women as a whole? I am not exactly sure.
The lyrics are rather sexual and demoralise women to an extreme, especially T.I's rap before the bridge does resemble very much of female abuse. However I do not think that banning the song will exactly help.
Unfortunately, the majority of this genre are like this. If you listen closely to the lyrics of other hip hop songs such as Soulja Boy's Crank That, Lil Jon's Get Low and Flo Rida's Whistle, they are all rather derogatory to women, and all in way have this connotation that women are objects and are easily controlled. If none of these songs got banned, they why should Blurred Lines be.
In addition to this, the female singers of this genre such as Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, Missy Elliot, Azealia Banks and so forth also sing these type of songs about men, which are also rather degrading, espeically Azealia Bank's big hit 212.
My point is if the mainstream radio stations such as the BBC stations have decided that it is OK for mainstream listening, then surely what makes university different? Surely then, if you want to stamp out these sort of lyrics, you should be stomping out Hip-Hop in general.
Plus why ban them at university? At school, this is really understandable because the lyrics are too vulgar for a younger audience. But at university, people are adults and they should decide what they believe is right and what is wrong.
In addition, the reason the song has done so well is mainly because it is catchy. It is nothing to do with the fact that the lyrics are derogatory, it really as if someone is going to listen to the song and get some inspiration from it. Not in my opinion.
Most of all though, songs like this should be getting press attention and getting scrutinised. Before this, I did not think into deeply what the lyrics of the song actually meant, but now I have read all the articles and because of this press attention, I now understand. Surely we should not be hiding something because it is offensive.
You need to teach them how this song is offensive and then people can learn from that. We need to teach people rather than hide it away from them. When I say teach don't go around saying that Robin Thicke is a moron because that is just immature and won't change anything. Teach about these and other derogatory lyrics and that this sort of behaviour towards women is not acceptable.