According to excerpts of model Emily Ratajkowski’s upcoming memoir, singer Robin Thicke drunkenly groped her bare breasts on the set of the “Blurred Lines” music video, the R-rated version of which featured the topless Ratajkowski dancing alongside two other nearly nude models as the fully clothed Thicke, Pharrell Williams, and rapper T.I. croon, “I know you want it.”
It’s always the ones you least expect!
Though the lyrics of the song were decried by feminists as promoting “rape culture” upon its 2013 release, the song blew up the charts, and the music video earned multiple nominations at MTV’s VMAs. Responding to critics who charged the music video with objectifying the nude models, Thicke claimed only “extra-religious people” would take offense.
That only prudes and backward, second-wave feminists could find a harem of naked chicks dancing for the male gaze demeaning to women was indeed the conventional wisdom at the time. Even Ratajkowski, who only catapulted to real fame after the song, defended the music video as “celebrating women and their bodies.”
Then emerged the real story.
Within the year, Thicke and his wife, actress Paula Patton, announced their separation, with Patton earning full custody of their son and a restraining order after the divorce was finalized because of Thicke’s alleged alcohol, drug, and physical abuse.
“Given Robin’s history of hitting me with a closed fist, pushing me onto the ground and kicking me, I had no doubt he was capable of hitting Julian, particularly after having used cocaine, alcohol or whatever other substances with which he is presently involved,” Patton wrote in court documents of Thicke’s behavior toward her and her son. (Just a note: hitting someone with a closed fist is also known as “punching.”)
Ratajkowski would also later change her tune, calling the music video “the bane of her existence” in 2015 and now revealing that Thicke groped her bare breasts on the set without her consent. The video’s director corroborated Ratajkowski’s account, claiming she screamed out and immediately ended the shoot.
Nudity, sexuality, and boundary-pushing all have a way of either heightening or degrading a piece of art. But the “Blurred Lines” video, with its shameless lack of a narrative, conceit, or even coherent concept tying it together, except for the objectification of some naked chicks, was never “art.” And the alleged wife-beating abuser’s behavior on the set simply proves it.
