{"id":982,"date":"2016-07-01T10:45:33","date_gmt":"2016-07-01T10:45:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=982"},"modified":"2016-07-01T10:45:33","modified_gmt":"2016-07-01T10:45:33","slug":"sex-barbie-aqua-im-a-barbie-girl-bdsm-vengaboys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=982","title":{"rendered":"Lessons in BDSM from Barbie Girl"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

B<\/span>efore the millennial excursion towards EDM and hip hop, the children of the \u201990s were glazed with the sugary hormones of boy\/girl bands. They didn\u2019t mince innuendo either: The Vengaboys told us to go \u201cBoom Boom Boom Boom\u201d, The Backstreet Boys overtly taught cunnilingus to horny teens in \u201cGet Down\u201d, and Christina Aguilera\u2019s \u201cGenie in a Bottle\u201d is an ode to foreplay. In the carnal mist floating around, a candypop band singing about dolls fucking was hardly unconventional.\n\nAqua\u2019s <\/p>\u201cBarbie Girl\u201d<\/a> clearly was about getting it on at nightclubs \u2013 come on baby, let\u2019s go party, ah ah ah yeahh <\/em>\u2013 but that\u2019s not all there was to it. Below the surface, the song could be interpreted in so many ways. Aqua, as I grew to understand, had reimagined sex through the optics of power-exchange, slyly championing BDSM (Bondage, Domination, Sadism and Masochism). An underground subculture once thought to exclusively gratify deviants and freaks, it is now considered a form of regulated abuse built entirely on mutual consent.\n\nAllow me to tell you just how fucking radical that was.\n\n\u201cBarbie Girl\u201d came out in 1997, the year I turned 12 in the middle of middle school. I hated school with a passion. It was filled with bullies who stole my tiffin box for the sole purpose of upending its contents on the playground. Teachers with rulers, peons with switches, even ayahs and their brooms threatened my safety. The kids called me girly-boy and faggot and the adults excused boys for being boys.\n\nMy escape from this drudgery was pop music: Catchy melodies dancing in my ears took my mind off schoolyard torture. When \u201cBarbie Girl\u201d released, it was a superhit. But Barbies, really? I was almost a man, I wanted nothing to do with a song about girly toys. Yet, I was assaulted from all angles and the lyrics imprinted themselves onto my brain. All of this unfolded at a time when I was trying to shed the fetters of my decidedly unmasculine body (just three chest hairs!). And then Nature conveniently decided that it was not going to make my life easier.\n\nAlmost imperceptibly, my circuitry rewired itself and I was aware of shapes and bodies I hadn\u2019t noticed before. I sought to procure those shapes and bodies any way I could. Dial-up took ten minutes to load a single picture, and I customarily unloaded twice before the nips stopped depixellating. I had to resort to videotapes from a shady rental stores. Standard porn \u2013 delivery boys feat. lonely housewives and thematic variants thereof \u2013 taught me to view women as warm bodies to whom sex was done. Their roles were to lie down and take it. If a man wanted it, the woman had<\/em> to give in.\n\nBy the time I was in high school, I had lost interest in pop music and moved on to vigorously misogynistic rap and metal, which made me resent femininity even more. At the same time, classic porn was becoming far too vanilla for me. I had sexualised my bitterness and my fantasies had become increasingly brutal. Then one day when I was 15, my neighbour slipped me a tape and told me it contained something interesting. I played it.\n\nWomen chained to walls, leather-strapped men prodding them like cattle. Women forced into submission, gagged and whipped. The mercilessness aroused me like nothing else.\n\nThey enjoy this<\/em>, my boner told me each time before exploding, they are weak, they deserve to be used. <\/em>BDSM porn became an addiction, a vicarious escape from my self-hatred. I embodied those dominant alpha males who gained pleasure from absolute control. Power dynamics aren\u2019t as alien to children as you\u2019d think. Keeping women under my thumb meant they would never get a chance to hurt me like my childhood tormentors did.\n\nThe first few women in my life were far from happy. I was physically and emotionally abusive and before long they had left me. Until her: A blazing metal-head with piercings all over. She was rowdy, ferociously tomboyish, and everything else that should have turned me off in a woman. Her natural confidence made me nervous; she would always call the shots. Our first fuck was at her demand. I was torn between intense attraction and the terror of regressing into that impotent tween boy.\n\nWhen we met the second time, I decided to grow some balls and show her who was boss. I was about to grab her by the throat and shake her senseless, when she asked if I would tie her hands behind her back. Familiar lyrics wafted through the room.\n\nI\u2019m a blonde bimbo girl\/ in a fantasy world\/ dress me up, make it tight, I\u2019m your dolly<\/em>.\n\nI handcuffed her to the bed. She was my plaything. And I started to feel empowered again.\n

My entitlement to her body went no further than her concession. My need for control was balanced by her open willingness.<\/blockquote>\nShe looked up at me and said she wanted me to make her my fucktoy. The incongruity of the cloying music with her assertive nature perplexed me. Until now, women had always looked at me in fear when I forced myself on them, but she wanted<\/em> to be dominated.\n\nMake me walk, make me talk, do whatever you please\/ I can act like a star, I can beg on my knees. <\/em>\n\nShe told me to hit her. I slapped her straight in the face. She smiled. Something was different this time. She was enjoying the pain that had alienated me from any previous affection. I was being told what to do, but I still felt in command. I realised that surrendering her dignity to me didn\u2019t make her weak; quite the opposite, in fact. My entitlement to her body went no further than her concession. My need for control was balanced by her open willingness.\n\nThe words of the song I once scorned detonated in my head. Everything changed that night.\n\nThe take-home from \u201cBarbie Girl\u201d was hammered in when I was being too enthusiastic in my choking. She gurgled out \u201cred\u201d, and in an instant the sexual fervour deflated: We were girlfriend and adoring boyfriend, cuddling and massaging her neck.\n\nYou can touch, you can play\/ if you say \u201cI\u2019m always yours\u201d<\/em>.\n\nRed. The safeword allowed her to regain agency over herself. It was my obligation to ensure her comfort and security, and allow her to express her needs parallel to mine.\n\nIt took a 20-year old childhood song to teach me that the single thing separating BDSM from plain abuse is clear consent from the submissive and unwavering responsibility of the dominant.\n\nIn the song, Barbie is the first one to take control, she knows exactly what she wants and how she wants it. Ken merely responds to her inclinations. She enthusiastically announces her adoration for the act \u2013 lives in plastic, it\u2019s fantastic<\/em> \u2013 her decision is unequivocal. It decides the dynamic.\n\n\u201cBarbie Girl\u201d taught me many things: the importance of choice, the freedom that comes from letting go, and most importantly, that it is set in a fantasy world. You leave behind bitter realities and enter a zone of impregnable security; you leave behind the toxic masculinity, the rigid gender performance it endorses.\n\nI believed that the subjugation of femininity by hyper-masculine ideals would set me free, would at last make me a man. But in some ways I have realised that submission is strength, that to freely give up jurisdiction of your body is true power. Barbie Girl is a strong independent woman who don\u2019t need no man. Except to show him that he only wields control with her express permission. You listening, Ken?\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At first pass, “Barbie Girl” is a song set in a plastic world. But scratch below the surface, and you can read its silent messages about BDSM.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":131,"featured_media":983,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop-culture"],"yoast_head":"\nLessons in BDSM from Barbie Girl<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"At first pass, "Barbie Girl" is a song set in a plastic world. 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