Controversy Around WAP by Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion Shows Society Isn’t Ready for Sexually Liberated Women

WAP (wet ass p*ssy) by Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion opens with nude female statues, water gushing out of their nipples, with “there’s some whores in this house” playing on repeat. Twitter was up in arms because the video was too much: too explicit, too slutty, too sexual, too problematic. Honestly, the only thing I regret about this banger is that I can’t scream the lyrics with the crowd at the club thanks to coronavirus, the cockblocker of the year. People who searched “Wireless Application Protocol” (WAP) on YouTube and found that music video probably have regrets too. A moment of silence for them. Anyway, here’s why WAP is empowering, and why most criticism against it is sexist.

Male rap videos often reduce women to objects for male consumption, whose duty is to satisfy men’s sexual needs, while WAP is just women twerking and singing about their sexual desires, with not a man in sight. WAP doesn’t rap about how women can serve men sexually, it’s about mutually pleasurable sex. They begin the song with how they want to be eaten out, how they want to be penetrated etc. while also discussing their bedroom skills. The proactive and commanding language they use like “I want you to…” “I need a…” “I tell him where to put it” “Make it cream” shows how they are taking charge of their sexuality, refusing society’s mission to censor female sexuality and only portray it from the male gaze. Speaking of which, not that you asked, but I’m a freak too; my favourite position is lying on my back, eating ice cream while watching Netflix.

The verb “f*ck” implies sex isn’t something you do together, it’s something that’s done to women by men; men perform sex, and women receive it. This may be why we’re comfortable with men describing what they do in bed in their music, but once a woman does it, it’s problematic. Cardi and Megan raise a middle finger to this narrative, by describing their very active role in sex as freely as men do. WAP tells us that just like men, women get horny too, and that’s okay. It’s okay to have a WAP that wants you to be a “certified freak, seven days a week”. It’s okay to enjoy sex and talk about how you enjoy it. It’s okay to tell your partners exactly what you want in bed.

[On a side note, I act like I’m okay, but deep down when I watch Megan and Cardi serve sick moves in WAP, I have a female boner. I could barely touch my toes during sports warm-up, but Cardi B was twerking while doing a split. If half of us tried that, we’d end up in hospital.]

Sexual intercourse often focuses on male pleasure: making him orgasm, giving great oral sex, spelling coconut with your waist so your man enjoys sex, yet men are rarely told how to please women. This creates the “Orgasm Gap” which means in heterosexual encounters, men orgasm more than women. In one study examining about 800 college students, a 52% orgasm gap was found. That is, 39 percent of women and 91 percent of men said that they usually or always experienced orgasm in partnered sex. Insane, right?

In WAP, Cardi B and Megan reject this by describing exactly what they want in bed, empowering women to seek out relationships where they’re sexually satisfied. Female pleasure is repressed and considered immoral, especially in African societies. This is why female genital mutilation exists; women’s clitorises are cut off because of the belief female pleasure is indecent, and their vaginas stitched to a tiny hole so they are “tighter” for their husband’s pleasure. Zimbabwean women are made to pull their labia from as young as nine years, because apparently men love that. Women feel pressure to put herbs and creams in their vagina to tighten them, yet no one is telling men to do weird things like pulling their ballsacks into a ponytail or getting penis enlargement for their wives.

What about female pleasure? Why can’t women express their sexual needs the way men can, without being slut-shamed?

When you slut-shame women, you consolidate patriarchy’s tendency to praise men with a long list of sexual conquests, yet women doing the same are called whores. Gender double standards are at play here. Where was the outrage for these overly sexual songs and music videos videos by men:
– Trey Songz – Animal, with a very graphic music video
– Lil Wayne – Lollipop, Pussy Monster, Suck it or not (I could go on with Lil Wayne’s songs; this guy eats, breathes and farts sex)
– August Alsina – Porn star and the rest of his songs
– Akon – I wanna f*ck you
– Every The Weeknd song ever, including the Earned It music video
– Yung Thug – I want your vagina, and his other songs
– The Lonely Island ft Akon – I Just Had Sex
– HaSizzle – She Rode That Dick Like A Soldier
– Juicy J – slob on that knob

If I compiled all explicit songs by male artists, the list would be as long as an amaPiano song. People called Cardi and Megan out for being half naked and dancing sexually, but why haven’t you called out male artists for having hundreds of half-naked women twerking in their videos? Men sing about having sex with “b*tches” all the time, graphically describing private parts, foreplay, and sex itself, but society doesn’t bat an eyelid. Somehow men with explicit music aren’t bashed for immorality and not being husband material but women are. If you’re going to call Cardi and Megan hoes for WAP, then Lil Wayne, Rick Ross, August Alsina, Yung Thug, Drake, The Weeknd and every male rapper ever, are hoes too.

Male rappers even sing sexually violent songs, like Tyler the Creator, but they aren’t called out. Kanye West’s music video for Monster has dead half-naked women hanging from nooses, their dismembered heads on the floor, and he even appears in bed with female corpses. The song is extremely violent and graphic, but people called it “art”. How is a music video portraying gender-based violence more morally acceptable than one with two consenting adult women rapping about their horniness?

[On another side note, I became pregnant just watching Cardi and Megan on the sand in those sexy outfits]

WAP is immoral by whose standard? Morality isn’t a fixed yardstick to measure things against. Some think sex before marriage is immoral, while others are cool with hook-up culture. Some think smoking and drinking are bad, while others are cool with it. In the same way, stop imposing your morals on sexually empowered female rappers. If you don’t like their music, no one’s stopping you from blasting Rebecca Malope and Hillsong. People who think they’re Deputy God even used Christianity to bash the singers yet The Song of Solomon is a holy text of King Solomon talking about how horny he is, yet God still blessed him. Heck, Jesus was best friends forever with a prostitute without telling her what to do with her body. He also essentially told men to cut off their dicks if they find a woman too sexy (Matthew 5:27-30). So if WAP bothers you because it arouses you, throw yourself away.

Some men think because WAP has the refrain “There’s some whores in this house,” that gives them permission to call Megan and Cardi hoes. No, you can’t call them hoes. Megan and Cardi calling themselves whores is like black people calling themselves niggers, although it’s a racist derogatory term. Calling ourselves niggers while whites aren’t allowed to, takes power away from the oppressor, because we’ve denied them the right to denigrate us with that word, while we call ourselves that in a chilled manner.

In the same way, women can call themselves hoes and bitches if they want to, but under no circumstances is it okay for men to call us that. This is because whore/slut/hoe are derogatory terms used to oppress women for expressing their sexuality, yet no such term exists for men. Yes, there’s “f*ckboy” but that term shames someone’s crappy character, not their sexuality.

I heard, “she has a child! She can’t be singing inappropriate songs like that!” Honey, Lil Wayne has three children but he’s been singing about sex his entire career with no issue. Future has like, nine kids, yet no one says that to his music. That argument doesn’t even make sense because millennials and generation Z grew up on explicit and vulgar rap songs by Lil Kim and Young Money, but we turned out just fine. Our parents grew up on explicit songs like mnike , Baby Got Back, My Neck My Back, but they turned out just fine.

Some Twitter “feminists” said WAP sent women back 100 years because it objectifies women. This is problematic because it says only one version of womanhood is correct—women in business suits, brokering deals, wearing a lab coat or working in a law firm—that anyone who falls out of this version is disempowering women. These “feminists” say women mustn’t wear revealing clothing or twerk because it caters for the male gaze and consolidates female objectification.

Newflash: feminism promotes women’s independent choices and freedom; meaning, it doesn’t aim to remove women from one box and put them in another, it aims to remove these boxes altogether. If you’re slut-shaming women who are consentingly sexual, sorry ma’am, you’re practicing Feminism Lite™, and you’re perpetuating sexism.

These gatekeepers of patriarchy were proclaiming how unlike Cardi B and Megan, they have morals: “I’m not like girls these days”. This phenomenon is called “Pick Me!” because these pick-me’s bash other women in order to portray themselves as a better example of womanhood, to appeal to men who will pick them. In this case, pickmes bashed Cardi B and Megan to look morally superior. My question to them is, do you want a medal? Should we put a star sticker on your forehead? Okay then congrats, for that, you win… nothing! These Women Of The Cloth™ say things like, “women these days can’t cook or clean and they dress like hoes! SMH!” Yet Cardi B raps:
“I don’t cook, I don’t clean
But let me tell you how I got this ring (Ayy, ayy)”

When Cardi rapped this line, a pick-me died. She disproves gender expectations that pick-mes think constitute “wife material”, because she got married despite not being “domesticated”, despite being sexually empowered. She raps about sex but Offset still decided Cardi B is 100 metres of wife material. In fact, the abovementioned lyrics suggest Offset married her because she’s a freak.

Women’s sexual empowerment is on feminism’s agenda. Our sexuality has always been repressed and censored, while men have been allowed to be as sexual as they want for millennia. Men are so sexually liberated that their sexual urges are used to justify sexual assault in courts of law. We’ve been objectified to the point that our breasts—non-sexual organs that is literally for feeding Bundles of Joy, a secondary sex characteristic just like beards and broad shoulders—has been ruled as inappropriate, yet men can walk around shirtless, because their bodies aren’t sexualized.

This explains why you were offended by Cardi’s boobs dangling free with only nipple pasties covering them, yet there’s nothing sexual about them. I’d like to remind you that we Africans walked around with our tits bouncing like basketballs for millennia until Europeans came and told us boobs are offensive.

There’s a global pandemic, Zimbabwe is going through a humanitarian crisis, gender-based violence is spiking under lockdown, inflation has surpassed 840%, global warming is happening alarmingly fast. Two women rapping about how horny they are, is the least of our problems. Here’s a list of better things to do than hating on WAP:
– watch Game of Thrones season 1 to 8
– go work on your eyebrow game
– plant maize on your grandmother’s farm
– educate yourself about intersectional feminism
– raise awareness about #ZimbabweanLivesMatter

Even if you want to cancel Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion, their song debuted at number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, so while you’re hating on them, they are wiping their WAPs with bank notes.