Apple Bottom Jeans—Where’s the chicks?

Using sexy ladies to spice up a music video is a concept that even my great-grandparents are familiar with. Sex sells—it’s always going to be that way.

But we’re on the dawn of a sexual revolution—because of the music video Low by Flo Rida. Low can be described in just three words: apple bottom jeans.

Although it’s hard to put the words “apple bottom jeans” and “revolution” in the same sentence there is something so different about this music video that it might just spawn a sexual revolution.

Where are the girls? And where are the apple bottom jeans?

Almost every frame was a guy nodding his head to the slow beat and making some gesture with his fingers—(sexy).

For those of you fortunate enough not to have a radio, and haven’t had this song bashed into your head 43 million times— Low is all about admiring a sexy woman—there may even be a reference or two to prostitution (so classy). Nothing new about that—don’t waste your IQ points trying to figure out the lyrics.

But with the video clocking in at 3:49 minutes long it has only 35 seconds (give or take) of combined frames showing actual women (I counted because I care). That’s a whole 3:14 minutes of just a bunch of guys singing about women.



By now you’ll realize this isn’t your average music video – in fact, take a look at every other top ten video on MTV.com. All of them feature more images of women than men – even the music videos by female artists. Old school Britney Spears actually contained just a few frames of men in her videos.

The lack of women in Low is so untraditional that one might even argue that gender and sexuality is on the brink of a revolution.

Objectifying women has become so much the social norm and unofficial proof of a man’s masculinity that men no longer need to even show the images of the women they’re objectifying.

Because the message of the song is not Look how pretty this woman is…don’t you agree she’s hott? , but you know I’m a man because I sing about how I objectify women—look how cool I am.

And the video assumes that the audience doesn’t want to see images of sexy women—but rather hero shots of the men.

In other words – sexuality has become a way for men to prove their masculinity to each other so much so that sex has nothing to do with it anymore.

Now some of you might be thinking – you can’t possibly find proof of a sexual revolution inside a rap video made by conceited men. And perhaps this is an isolated incident. Or maybe it’s not.