Man, the things Trina's video for "Million Dollar Girl" brings to mind. How long it's been since Diddy was part of a song I liked. How Keri Hilson is so ridiculously gorgeous and tall. And how rare it is to have a video like this where a female singer is really aggressively objectifying a man:
The song's ostensibly Trina making the case for why she qualifies as a "million dollar girl." But really, it's about her laying out precisely how awesome she is--and what kind of man she wants. And boy, does she get, uh, unsubtle about it..."I'm in that pink Ferrari / I got a thing for Porsches / I like my men like my cars / Strong, and built like horses," is the kind of verse that might make me very specifically uncomfortable if the genders of the speaker and objects were reversed. And the guys in the second setup in the video around the desk look genuinely kind of uncomfortable as she grabs their ties, crawls over them, and pushes their glasses back on their heads. I was talking to Amanda Hess about this, and the fact that the right to objectify guys isn't equality--it isn't even necessarily progress. But there is something enticing about a girl going there and getting hers, even if it's not quite right.