Born on the 4th of July? No I wasn't. Which is why I have well over a week of being in my thirties. Take that America! Bet you feel per-itty stupid now!
I have been thinking about the Calvin Harris song "The Girls" in which Calvin Harris goes on about what kind of girls he likes and then shows off about the fact that he "gets" all of them. Which seems unlikely. And one wonders if he is trying to assert his success a bit too desperately because secretly he fancies boys, but none of them like him back.
Calvin lists all the kinds of girls he likes in the verse, which goes thus:
"I like them Black girls, I like them White girls
I like them Asian girls, I like them mixed raced girls
I like them Spanish girls, I like them Italian girls
I like the French girls, and I like Scandinavian girls
I like them tall girls, I like them short girls
I like them brown hair girls, I like them blonde hair girls
I like them big girls, I like them skinny girls
I like them carrying a little bitty weight girls"
You might think that Calvin is essentially saying he likes all girls, regardless of their personality or age (unless he actually means he likes girls and the song is a celebration of indiscriminate paedophilia). But let's say he means women, then he is pretty much obsessed with them all. As I am turning 40 and going through a mid-life crisis I can understand this. I had hoped that getting old would make me less libidinous, but if anything the twin concerns of having failed to procreate, plus the fear of being old and unattractive, has sent my libido into a hurricane of hormones and like Calvin Harris, I pretty much like all girls (women) I see, regardless of their ethnic origin, hair colour or weight. It's a kind of living Hell, and I assume one that all men my age are going through to some degree and it makes me feel very sorry for the married men who are suddenly thrust into this hormonal maelstrom. Society mocks the dirty old man going through a mid-life crisis seeing him as pathetic and deluded and desperate. There is not the understanding that is generally given to women's hormonal issues. Which seems unfair. It's a horrible and depressing place to be, because unlike Calvin Harris, middle-aged men at least have the maturity to be ashamed and embarrassed by their lustful feelings. Don't be ashamed though, my fellow sufferers. I understand. And by the way, you might think that giving in to your urges will make things better, but believe me, having sex just makes the condition worse, like throwing paraffin on a fire, so my advice to the unfortunate married men going through this misery is not to give in to your urges and carry on progressing through the daily grind of marital misery. Hopefully the feelings will pass, at least when you are dead. Not long to go now.
Anyway that insight into my damaged head is not what today's entry is about. It is actually to point out that Calvin Harris is not quite as unracist, unhaircolourist and unsizeist as he is claiming to be.
You might think it would be simpler for him to just say "I like all girls, regardless of their race, hair colour or size" which would make his point more effectively than trying to list all the kinds of girls there are.
But clearly that is not the information he wants to get across. He is actually more choosy than he might appear, because he leaves out quite a large proportion of women in his list.
Whither the Aborigine women? Or the Innuit? Or Muslim females from the Middle East? He also doesn't seem to care for the vast majority of European chicks, specifically name-checking the Italians, Spanish, French and Scandanavians, but not seeming to like Germans, Austrians, Portuguese or any of the other many European women, including all those of you in the United Kingdom.
He likes brown-haired and blonde women, but clearly has no time for red-heads. He also seems to have little time for the grossly overweight.
So at the moment Calvin is seen as a cheeky loveable rogue, with his indiscriminate love of seemingly all women, but if he was more honest and just blatantly sang what he is saying in between the lines would people like him so much?
If the song went
"I hate Aborigine girls, I hate Eskimo girls, I hate all Muslim girls, I hate the vast majority of European girls, I hate red haired girls and really really fat girls. And by the way, I am a paedophile" would it still get the airplay it currently enjoys? Yet it is saying that and because (one could argue, though I would definitely never say this) Calvin Harris is a clever racist paedophile he is getting away with it.
It would be OK if he was 40 and confused and upset, but he isn't. He was born in the Eighties (the eighties) and has love for you if you were born in the Eighties, though presumably not if you are Aborigine, Eskimo etc. The Venn diagram of the women that Calvin Harris likes would be very complicated.
