‘Pata ni logo Benz’ was an era in the trenches. Girls were losing their panties that they hung out to dry and supposedly running mad a while later. It was funny, the correlation between panties and madness. Yet rumours grew; it was a new tactic for rituals. Boys did not need to woo girls into fake relationships anymore. Just find a pair of panties and secure your Benz. The Mercedes-Benz logo and its signature three-pointed star, akin to a G-string if you looked hard enough, confirmed that.
Lace panties could get you a Benz, so what would a G-string get you? What if the panties were worn out? What if they belonged to a ‘virgin’? What would happen if you took a random pair hanging outside? You’d use it for nothing serious anyway, but imagine the woman’s distress when she’d notice her panties had gone missing. It’s so ‘funny’. So funny that it gets made into a song by two of the most popular artistes of that era, popular even in places where they have no knowledge of the backstory. “Even I would use your panties (and by implication, you) for money,” they sing—a very interesting stance to take.
The solution drawn was simple. Girls should hang their underwear inside. No one had time to care if they ran mad. Better never-dry lingerie than madness. It’s uncomfortable to some people, but those who find it funny are our concern. If they laugh, we laugh. Even though the joke started out of a rumour about girls suffering the indignity of stolen panties, stolen by people naively seeking to conduct absurd spiritual rituals. The joke was easier than addressing the other party, but if the other party decided something was too far, we agreed. We join a national campaign for justice. We ask for a DNA test. We support their parents.
Another musician courted controversy recently as he aired out his business with a female sex worker. Casual partner? Girlfriend? Who knows? He consistently highlights his sexual dominance in his relationship dynamics, framing it as something ‘his’ women have no choice but to take from him. He cannot clarify if he thinks his female sex workers do not deserve to earn rightful wages, nor can he clarify if he thinks all girlfriends are just sex workers with extra steps. A woman who is a prostitute is a woman that he dominates and degrades. Everyone should deal with it and sing along… in a country with an underreported and underprosecuted rape epidemic. An interesting choice.
Women play along. Sometimes, they laugh in discomfort or roll their eyes or ignore another problematic message on the group chat. Sometimes, they try to offer the generosity of interpretation. Yet, another girl ends up dead every other month. A middle-aged female senator fights demotion because she refuses to take harassment. The lives of girls all over the country are recalibrated—from their daily commute to who they get friendly with to how they interact with society, their living conditions must become stricter. The aftermath is left for women to shout about and, ultimately, to deal with because the other half of society does not deem it a communal problem. The last stage is the musical references, cementing women’s experiences through mockery and holding out the mic for them to sing along.
The next murderer says the girl he stalks, decapitates, and bundles in a bin disposal bag is his girlfriend with whom he had a disagreement. He says he’s unremorseful because of that and that she deserves it. The rumour mill fuels this very quickly and turns this into the focal point of discussion. Here comes your one-eyed, self-proclaimed singer to croon to the audience about the women who might disturb him and how he will dispose of such women in a ‘bin bag’. Another interesting choice.
The audience, again, is expected to sing along. There is no war in Ba Sing Se. “It wasn’t meant that way.” It’s always a ‘pure’ coincidence. Yet, nothing exists in a vacuum, this inspiration certainly doesn’t. Somehow, desecration is always the choice where advocacy is an option. The music industry and its patrons feed into the cruel loop.
It’s a ritual of sorts. As if the degradation of women is a portal of entry into the juicier part of the industry. Is it lucrative to rile up women knowing that they have no power to stop you? What fertile grounds are these lyrics cultivating? Why are these grounds being cultivated? Do most of the music industry patrons find the murder or allusion to the worthlessness of young women fun? If they do, why is no one addressing it? Why is the music being allowed to air to unsuspecting and, worse, unthinking audiences?
Not only is it bad enough that a girl gets murdered at a tender age in Enugu, but it is more sinister to make someone in Ibadan sing about it for fun because they do not know the context. An even further desecration of a soul that should be resting in peace, nursing its wound of injustice.
