Is This What Young People Are Into?

Is This What Young People Are Into?

March 2, 2018

By Leslie Díaz Monserrat.
Degree in Journalism (2011). Instructor teacher at the Central University.
Honorable Mention in the Provincial Prize for Scientific Journalism.

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.

Now that little walking loudspeakers are playing –or not playing– music in the city, it is quite common to listen to songs such as Mayores, where Becky G with Bad Bunny unhappily come together.

Some teenagers walk down the street with the song loud and clear, while the lyrics can be heard in the young woman’s loud voice:

I like older men/ Those who you call gentlemen/ Those who open the door/ And send you flowers.

Up to that point, everything is perfect, because the age difference doesn’t have to be an impediment to love, it can even have its charms. The problem is when the other stanza comes with a refrain like this:

I like them bigger / so they don’t fit in my mouth…

And yes, you don’t need to blow your imagination away. It’s just what you’re thinking.

With the arrival of Trap, direct and unadorned sex has become an essential element to sell and accompanies the music videos of this musical subgenre, as some people call it. The truth is that I have no category where to place it.

In the clip of Mayores, the singer appears dressed in the costume of a sadomasochistic porn star. Sitting on a sofa, she opens her legs, in a pose with a marked sexual charge, with gestures that, more than sensual, are coarse, with little class…

It is not about giving a moralistic reading to the clip. Well-created human sensuality can and has been one of the most exquisite edges of art. But of course, the artistic completely removes vulgarity and the justly vulgar, that’s what Becky G look like.

On the other hand, the nefarious Bad Bunny appears using a jargon of a young alpha male talking about his powers in bed, in the style that, with him, there is no need for toys. How sweet!

The video, where dark tones reign and imitate the life of a nightclub, returns to a story in the style of the delinquents Bonnie and Clyde, because, in the end, they cheat the old man, but not before leaving him handcuffed to the bed.

It’s amazing that it’s the women, us, who make this type of artist’s popularity fatter? who sells a stereotyped, silly, insipid image of intimacy.

Becky G and Bad Bunny are the ones who shape your musical taste and, in turn, become a reference point on how to dress and act. That would be fatal.