In 1999 I was 11. Everyone was panicking about the millennium and predicting that the world would end when the clock struck twelve on December 31st, finally turning into a pumpkin and spontaneously combusting in the unfathomable cosmos that surrounds our tiny planet.
This was also the year that Sisquo released the Thong Song. I’m pretty sure that it was because of this song that I, along with a friend, went in secret to the lingerie shop on our local suburban high street and bought a thong. It was uncomfortable and seemed to serve no real purpose but I wore it anyway. About a week later, I overheard my dad telling my mum that he was concerned because I was wearing a thong. Sorry, dad. Between the ages of 12 and 14, I wore said thong whilst loitering around the local tennis courts with inappropriate older boys, one of whom sent me a dick pic when I bumped into him a few Christmases ago. Time is a funny old thing, eh?
Anyway, I digress…it’s now 2017 and Sisquo has decided to re-release the Thong Song. I’m now fully in the swing of the final year of my 20s and I rarely wear thongs. For a long time, thongs were a no go, they fell out of fashion, having become not only the antithesis of chic but feminism. Collectively we came to our senses, why would you divide your butt cheeks with a piece of string which causes you severe discomfort all day? Why? VPL, rightly, dropped down the list of modern concerns and was replaced with big hitter issues like the housing crisis and gender pay gap. Marks and Spencer cottoned on (pardon the pun, I can’t help myself) and started selling the Brazilian knicker which filled the gap left (sorry again) by the thong’s demise. If further proof of our collective awakening is needed, we’re also more likely to be wearing bras without under wiring now than we were a decade or so ago. All hail the bralette.
That said, I will freely admit that despite knowing it was super sexualised and problematic I have continued listening to the Thong Song. Sometimes I listen to it while I’m working and if it comes on in the club I’ll lead the dance. I think this probably makes me what Roxane Gay described as a Bad Feminist. I wear sometimes pink, knew Blurred Lines was a disaster and danced to it anyway and get waxes regularly but I am, avowedly, a staunch feminist. Do I contradict myself? Very well I contradict myself, I’m human. As Gay said of herself and her writing ‘I embrace the label of bad feminist because I am human. I am messy. I am not trying to be an example. I am not trying to be perfect. I am not trying to say I have all the answers. I am not trying to say I’m right. I am just trying – trying to support what I believe in.’
So, in that vein, my name is Vicky Spratt. I am a feminist who has worn thongs in the past and spent more money than I have to spare on a wax because they play music videos (including the Thong Song) in the salon and it’s cleaner than my rented flat. When said, wax is over, I’ve been known to linger, savouring the sickly smell of a beauty parlour until it gets too much and I metaphorically splash my face with cold feminist water before going back to battle. And, anyway, compared to a quick scroll through Instagram the original Thong Song video is PG 13. There are, in fact, very few full-frontal shots of thonged bums in it. Sisquo was, in many ways, a trailblazer. He dared to pave the way for 2014, the Year of The Booty long before Kim Kardashian had even contemplated using hers to break the internet.
Testament to the enduring cultural capital of the thong is the fact that multiple members of the Kardashian Klan have been sporting butt dividing bikinis on an increasingly regular basis. 90s fashion is everywhere so it’s no surprise that thongs are back, Sisquo is smart to seize his moment. Carpe Diem.
Unfortunately, Sisquo’s remake is infinitely worse than the original by virtue of it being an EDM remix. We do not need any more EDM. I repeat, just say no to EDM. I would personally like to speak to the music exec whose brainchild EDM remixes of 90s classics is and hold them to account for the shameless homogenisation of culture. Let’s be clear: there is only one remix of the Thong Song which it is acceptable to listen to and it is the one by Artful Dodger.
More than anything, The Thong Song takes me back to a time when the music in the charts didn’t all sound exactly the same (you’re officially old when you say that aren’t you). Whatever. Unleash the dragon…
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Follow Vicky on @victoria_spratt
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.