The thrills and spills of being hip...

Pam & Tommy (2022)
Disney + (8-episode miniseries)

The joyfulness of youth does not last forever. Its spills and its thrills fade with time. All the hormonally charged freshness of young adulthood eventually loses its mojo. They say we want to immortalise all these as you only live one (YOLO). Time and tide wait for no one too. Hence, there is a pressing need to freeze everything you have to last a lifetime. Time is man's greatest foe; the race between man and time always sided time. 

This country, this world is no place for older men or women. It is all about youth, vibrancy and freedom. Even Nature sides the young. With wear and tear, the facial musculature of the old naturally sags, giving its wearer a perpetual frowning facies. In the words of Schaupenneur, the world is a miserable place, and Nature knows it. Senescence is grim. Hence, the lips curve downwards with age, opposite to how a smiling face of innocence appears.

Pamela Anderson, in her iconic role

Photography and later video were God-sent. These can permanently capture the joy and visualisation of assets long after the battle scars of Hard Knocks of Life knock them down. With the advent of recording devices at everyone's disposal, immortalising that notable, intimate, non-event or pornographic material has never been easier.

It is a trend for newlyweds to digitally commemorate the image of their supple young bodies. As part of their wedding photography shootout, they even include a pose in their most sexually enticing pose in their birthday suits. This, they would like to admire way after the scars of life take over their mortal bodies. 

Since everybody is doing it, the peer pressure to get a full monty representation of the shames of the Garden of Eden is ever compelling. So every average Jane does it, and nobody gives a second look. Not when the player is every young man's dream girl - the buxom Pamela Anderson who gained stardom appearing semi-naked every week on Baywatch and had appeared without a thread as Hugh Heffner's bunnies.

Pamela and her then-husband, the wild cocaine-snorting Motley Crew's drummer, Tommy Lee, found out the hard way when their intimate honeymoon sex tapes were stolen that the world is not kind. 

Even though they laugh with you and encourage you to do whacky things, when you get on the wrong side of the law, you are actually alone. The world judges you through their conservative lens even though you think the world has changed. No siree. The media is there to yank you out of any shred of dignity still left you. Everybody just takes you to the cleaners. You are left shivering in the cold while everyone prospers on your account while you salvage whatever self-respect that is. Court injunctions and proceedings are just farce. It does not lead to anything meaningful.

The lesson here is that youth and love are many splendoured things. The underdevelopment of the neocortex of the frontal lobe makes you do many things. But remember, many of these things have long-term effects and ruin the rest of your remaining life. It is OK to be young and free, but freedom comes with specific responsibilities. You do not want to be stuck, on tenterhooks, for the rest of your remaining life with its aftermath.

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Expressional freedom or exploitation?

Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion's 'WAP'

Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion's 'WAP'

It seems that this song is the latest one to play earworm in every Gen-Z and even millennials. It is said to have smashed many records and currently the most-streamed song. Streaming is said to be the true assessment of its popularity, uninfluenced by the interferences of the recording giants. It is also the talking point of many, saying that this song defines female-centred sexual empowerment.

To others, however, this is all just noise - a cunning way to exploit the female body to gyrate to obscene lyrics in scanty outfits. The dance moves are no work of art but mere abuse of freedom of expression to showcase pornography to the public eye in the name of democratisation of oppressed black females. The moves are not sexual innuendos but outright vulgarity.

Defenders of this type of expressions rebut that no one objected when male rappers made these type of sexually explicit videos. Not true. Even back in the 1990s, concerned with the rise in songs with dirty lyrics, a kind of classification system was introduced. This kind of lazy songwriting and exploitatory videos cannot be defended in the name of artistic licence.

Actually, this type of outburst is nothing new. Even when Elvis Presley started gyrating his pelvis to the song of 'Jailhouse Rock', the older generation thought it was an abomination. Such suggestive gestures, they say, was not in decorum with civil society. The end is nigh, they cried. People objected when 'Escape - The Piña Colada Song ' hit the airwaves; it promoted casual infidelity.

In Malaysia, Boy George's 'Karma Charmeleon' music video was banned as the singer crossdressed. Michael Sambelo's 'Maniac' went under the censors' scissors for the yoga pants that outlined the female anatomy a wee bit too vividly. The moral guardians, however, are helpless in stopping its wide-eyed citizens from feasting on Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion's 'WAP' as streaming transcend their jurisdiction.

For better or worse, this is how a society evolves. Lessons from the Prohibition in the US in the 30s only teaches us that suppressing something only makes the problem go worse. The inquisitive nature of people will always arouse their inner desire to take a bite at the forbidden fruit. In time to come 'WAP' will be as tame as Brothers Grimms' fairy tales. Only that the messages are cryptic just like how the story of 'Little Red Riding Hood' is not all a quick-thinking young girl but about a flirtatious girl caught between innocence and sexuality.

Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion's 'WAP' Debuts at No. 1 on Billboard Hot 100 With Record First-Week Streams

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