WAP: A Wet and Wild Ride of Sex in Pop Culture
Cardi B rapped about her Wet Ass Pussy and the world fell apart. Equipped with Megan Thee Stallion, a lime green outfit and a fountain she got society more divided than ever. Forget Brexit-gate, this is WAP-gate. The slogan? ‘Bring a bucket and mop for this wet ass pussy’.
Half of the camp are pro-Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion, throwing out words like ‘empowerment’, ‘owning sexuality’ and ‘hoes in this house’. The other side are thumping their hands on the table and chatting about degradation and vulgarity. Some notable examples include James P.Bradley, a Republican in Trump land, who tweeted (always the holiest medium of expressing yourself) “ Cardi B & Megan Stallion are what happens when children are raised without God and without a strong father figure. Their new ‘song’ The #WAP (which I heard accidentally) made me want to pour holy water in my ears.”
Sidestepping the fact that Mr P.Bradley actually transformed the title with an iconic use of the definite article and called it ‘The Wet Ass Pussy’ (coming to cinemas theatre), I’ll move onto my next example; another Republication, DeAnna Lorraine, tweeted “Cardi B & Megan Thee Stallion just set the entire female gender back by 100 years with their disgusting and vile WAP song.”
Let’s not waste time and word count on exploring whether they’re right or not - they’re not. No, what I want to talk to you about is this - How, in the name of all that is pure, are we in society where songs with lines in it like “Spit in my mouth, look in my eyes/this pussy is wet, come take a dive’ go straight to number 1, but we’re still stuck at putting condoms on bananas in Sex Ed class.
I want to get one thing straight - I’m not clutching at my pearls and praying for the children. I don’t have an issue with WAP - so don’t @ me.
Let’s just get some fucking perspective - Cardi B is a *rapper*. She is not a Disney Princess - nor has she ever set herself out as one. She talks openly about her stripping career, a touch of crime here and there and, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen her Instagram stories, but she’s hardly sat down wearing a buttoned blouse reading bed time stories. Yep, it’s pretty explicit. She doesn’t hold back - but neither have any of her male equivalents. Odd Future (Tyler the Creator’s group) were rapping about spitting and punching a ‘bitch’ after he eats steak a few years back (literally a million times worse than a song about someone really enjoying sex) and, what’s more, Cardi B isn’t the first womxn to sing about sex. Khia gave us the absolute classic, “My Neck, My Back” with gems like ‘lick it good/suck this pussy just like you should right now’ a while back and Miley Cyrus literally named an album ‘She Is Coming’. So, this isn’t new.
It’s been around for a while and, clearly, based on the fact that WAP (or, as James P.Bradly would call it ‘The WAP’) is number 1 on the hot 100 right now, it’s also very popular.
The thing is, I am troubled by this - and the reason why I’m troubled is because popular culture is at a point where it is very explicitly talking about sex - and all it’s nuances, fetish, pain-play yadda yadda. Yet, the rest of society isn’t.
Now, with that in mind, let’s consider who this music is probably going straight to. Let’s think about the people who are probably most likely to chuck it on the playlist and - perchance - come up with a cheeky TikTok dance to. That’s right - the Y O U T H.
The main consumers of TikTok and the charts are the younger audiences. In fact, the 13-24 year old segment represents 69% of the app’s user base. Now, it’s safe to guess that a lot of 24 year olds have muddled their way through their own sexual experiences and are figuring out their likes and dislikes.
However, I’m guessing for 13-16 year olds, their sexual experiences are far more limited. For many of them, their understanding of sex comes from Sex Education in PSHE - a montage of condoms, contraception and ‘this is how babies are born’. Maybe things have changed - but from what I remember, there was 0 talk on pleasure, fetish or foreplay. It was, and please ignore the pun, a quick ‘get in and get out’ situation; the getaway car was waiting outside the classroom for the painfully awkward teacher who taught us the bare necessities and then sped away, with the metaphorical door still open as the metaphorical car mounts the metaphorical curb.
So what crutch do we lean on - subconsciously and consciously - to inform our vision of sex? And when I say ‘vision’ I mean what to do during sex (always terrifying to fathom aged 15), what people expect etc. That’s right. Popular culture. Enter Wet Ass Pussy.
Older people can listen to Cardi B talking about liking it rough and a dick so big in her mouth it hits the dangly bit in the back of her throat and we can, hopefully, filter it through our own experiences and conversation. Essentially, we take what we want from the song. We know that pain-play is some people’s jam and for others they prefer foreplay over penetrative sex - or whatever.
But what if you can’t? What if as a 15 year old you’re learning about foreplay and crucial things like respect and pain during sex from the biggest pop culture around you - like the charts, like from WAP.
This would all be fine if society was in a place where everyone could freely discuss it - where sex Ed classes were already talking about all the things Cardi B is or where you could turn to your mates or your teacher or your parents and ask what the fuck Cardi B meant by Punani Dasani. But we’re not.
None of what Cardi B said is wrong or dangerous - what’s dangerous is that society is in a place where songs like this - explicit as they are - are shoved into stardom with half the camp calling it empowerment and the other half calling degradation, so we’re just left with this convoluted explanation of what is shameful, what is ‘normal’ and all of the rest in between.
Songs like this start to inform people’s definition of sex because it has the guts to talk about sex in a way that other outlets in life don’t. But Cardi B’s version of sex isn’t everyones. It is an extreme, hyper ‘into it’ version.
Popular culture is teaching us what to expect and what to give in their sexual experiences - with no one to modify or elaborate on what people like Cardi B are saying.
My thoughts? If you’re in the age group to hear about Cardi B being licked out and loving it, you’re in the age group to learn about it. Teaching someone about sex doesn’t sexualise someone - and, even if it did, are we not kind of closing the stable door when the horse has bolted considering we’re all listening to a song about a wet pussy in the charts?
This is so important - take, for example, the topic of pain during sex. Megan and Cardi tell us that ‘you can’t hurt my feelings, but I like pain’ and that they want to ‘gag’ and ‘choke’. Let’s just now think about the fact that nearly 3 out of 4 women have pain during intercourse at some time during their lives and a huge percentage (forgive me Journalism gods I cannot find the exact statistic but it was high, trust) of women consider pain a ‘normal’ part of sex. Spoiler, it’s not. If a certain position hurts, if something is uncomfortable, that’s not something you have to sit back and take in the name of calling it ‘rough’ - unless, and this is crucial, you want to.
I am all for Cardi B loving it rough but I also know enough to know that some people aren’t for that kind of thing. Like I said before, her lyrics aren’t dangerous, but team it up with lyrics like that of Odd Future talking about violence during sex and we’re filling a void left by sex ed classes when it comes to talking about things like pain during sex. It leaves space to seriously blur the lines between fetish and assault.
I just wish that, in a world where we can sing about and learn dances to songs called Wet Ass Pussy, we could - and I know this is radical - openly educate about all things sex as well. Incredible to think of isn’t it? A world where people get a grip and stop scandalising an activity that they are most likely, and quite literally, a product of.
Cardi B owes nothing to no one. She’s rapping about her own version of consensual sex... now it’s just up to society to catch up so we can filter the lyrics safely through our own knowledge and experiences and take it for what it is, a catchy tune about two women’s sexual preferences.
But hey, when it comes down to it, it looks like some people just still aren’t willing to let the hoes in the house.
Written by Jess Blackwell, The Everyday Founder
I’m Jess, the founder of The Everyday Magazine. Day to day I work in marketing and am training up as a photographer in a Boudoir Studio in Bath. As a general rule, I like to write about things that would be awkward to discuss with the family. Try not to blush.
If you are interested I would love a follow up article on WAP and how there are lots of examples of white women referencing sex in their music without it causing so much uproar. To pitch, just send jess@theeverydaymagazine.co.uk a pitch.