...but that can’t be right, right?
On Monday night, Erykah Badu posted a string of controversial tweets agreeing with a New Zealand school that enforced knee-length skirts for girls in order to “stop boys from getting ideas and create a good work environment for male staff.” The school’s actions were covered by The Cut, and Badu tweeted that it’s the responsibility of girl children to know the risks of their human sexuality. It looked a lot like a victim-blaming stance. But, again, that can’t be what she really means, right?
Here are her tweets:
You know, I guess...never mind, it seems that Erykah Badu really meant that it’s natural for a grown man hired to teach school-aged girls to be sexually attracted to them, and for the responsibility of curbing that attraction, whose endpoint is statutory rape, to fall on those school-aged girls.
What I want to believe is that she’s trying to say is what many women tell themselves: “This is how it should be and this is also how it is.”
For example, as a 5’10 woman with double Ds, I should be able to walk around my Brooklyn neighborhood with a short skirt and a low-cut top without being catcalled, told to smile or “putting myself in danger by tempting fools.” However, throughout my adult life, I have arrived at the conclusion that that dream is not going to happen. Now, does that mean I’m not going to wear the short skirt and boob shirt? Of course not—I wear what the fuck I want. But I do understand what kind of world I live in, and I’d like to think that that is what Erykah was trying to say.
But still, right now, it sounds like she’s telling young girls of “child bearing age”—which often includes actual preteens—that it’s their responsibility not to make their grown teacher want to sleep with them by being aware of their clothing, and that it’s possibly their fault if he tries, because of their clothes. That can’t be right, right?
Oh, Erykah, don’t do us like this.
Image via Getty.