Pop princesses’ jihad on men

They’re young, they’re cute and, if you’re male, they hate you.

That seems to be the common theme of late for pop’s top selling starlets – jihad against men. They have the sweet voices of sirens, but their words bear the screaming vitriol of Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan.

The latest is Brandy, singer and star of UPN Network’s defunct sitcom dud “Moesha.” Her latest single, “What About Us?” plays out on a soon-to-be released video of Brandy lamenting a failed relationship, while standing on a hill. But, according to MTV News’ Shaheem Reid, the hill is made of men. “The camera zooms out and we see that beneath the ground Brandy stands on, hundreds of agonizing men, down on all fours, are stacked on top of each other.”

To add a little touch of sado-masochism, there are the two chained-up, body-painted men at her feet, while Brandy, dressed in tough warrior garb, uses a metal baseball bat to smash a chest of mementos from her evil boyfriend. Of course, the video wouldn’t be complete without the required act of she-woman violence against men. This is the new “girl power.”

Brandy’s spokesperson told MTV News that “this simply has to do with her growing up. Like her fellow pop princess peer, Britney Speers, she’s not a little girl anymore.” From saccharin bubble-gum popster to man-torturer? If that’s growing up for today’s girls, we’re all in trouble. It seems like just yesterday, Brandy was singing, “The Boy is Mine.” Now she’s a female thug out to smash the boy up. Great.

Imagine the outcry from feminists if the roles were reversed. Take a couple of Backstreet Boys or N’Sync dudes, wanting to shed their image as girlish members of boy bands. Add a mountain of women on all fours with the men walking all over them. Then chain some of the women up, groveling at the male singers’ feet. Put in a touch of violence, smashing objects in the women’s faces. Would we put up with that? Not likely. It’s as bad as Eminem. But it comes and goes without the protestation. That’s the new feminism – when the tables are turned, anything goes for pop princesses.

Brandy is just the latest. But there’s a whole stack of them.

Take Blu Cantrell. Last year, she hit it big with her top-10 groove, “Hit Em Up Style (Oops).” The song has the sound and feel of a 1940’s ballad, with Cantrell’s angelic voice. But listen to the words, and you’ll hear Steinem and Ms. Magazine screeching from the CD player. “Hit Em Up Style” is Cantrell’s term for bankrupting your man when you catch him cheating – an inevitability in feminist pop. There’s no physical violence advocated here. Just vengeful damage to his credit.

“Hey ladies, when your man wanna get buck wild, just go back and hit em up style. Get your hands on his cash and spend it to the last dime. Oh when you go, then everything goes, from the crib to the rod to the clothes,” sings Cantrell. “So you better let him know, that if he mess up, ya gotta hit em up.” Nice grammar.

Yes, if your daughter listens to top-40 tunes, this is what she’s told will make her a “lady.” Cantrell has several suggestions of “another way to make him pay for it all”: “Neiman Marcus on a shoppin’ spree;” “All his pictures and the clothes in the baggin'”; And selling “everything else till there was just nothing left.” It makes Cantrell happy that “all of this I sold, left you out in the cold and all of this I sold will take you until you get old to get em back without me.”

Teaching women to steal and cheat to get back at a man, to bankrupt him – what a classy message.

Then there’s pop trio, “Destiny’s Child.” They’ve got three songs attacking men as failures and unnecessary. “Bills, Bills, Bills” excoriates men as “You trifling, good for nothing type of brother, Oh silly me, why haven’t I found another … a scrub like you who don’t know what a man’s about.” “Hey Ladies” (why do all of these pop stars think anyone who listens to them could possibly be a lady?) asks “why is it that men can go do us wrong; Why is it that we just decide to keep holdin’ on … But he’s got to go, he’s got to go … My man’s been cheatin’ on me … Yeah he did me wrong.” Then there’s “Survivor.” “Now that you are out of my life, I’m so much better … stronger … richer … wiser … smarter. I’m a survivor.”

Three bitter songs. Sounds like these barely dressed women from Destiny’s Child are the problem, not the men who put up with them.

With idols like this, it’s no wonder so many kids grow up to have marriages that end in divorce. For girls listening to top-40, no man will ever be able to compete with pop princesses’ disastrous girl-power philosophy. For them, all men are losers.