Parisian indie music group Bagarre’s new song “Diamant” (meaning “Diamond”) celebrates female masturbation. The video features a teenage girl eager to discover the female orgasm. With the encouragement from the female lead in Bagarre, the girl escapes dinner with her overbearing traditional parents and hides in the bathroom, where she unzips her pants.
It’s a social commentary about sexual freedom, but it also playfully addresses the issue of representation. In an interview with The Huffington Post France, lead singer Emma Le Masne says (translated), “I realized that I didn’t have a reference. How many jerk-off scenes have we seen in films for adolescents? And why don’t we ever see a young girl who is caught by her parents?”
Like Le Masne, I’ve asked myself why there are not more examples of young girls embracing their sexual desires and learning about their bodies. When I was a pre-teen living in rural south Texas, I snuck into the bathroom in the middle of the night and shamefully masturbated on the toilet.
After all, sex and masturbation were never discussed in my family. “Don’t do it” was the only counsel I ever received. Even the librarian in my elementary school fast-forwarded the tampon insertion tutorial when the 5th grade girls gathered to watch an educational video about menstruation.
The vagina was a mystery to me, just as it has been to a multitude of men throughout history, like John Harvey Kellogg (yes, of Kellogg’s cereal), who relentlessly preached that masturbation was a “soul-and-body-destroying habit.” Scoff.
I wish that talking about sex was a normalized behavior where I grew up. I felt guilty about masturbating at a young age. I felt ashamed of experiencing these completely natural urges. Luckily, I was able to deconstruct all of this in adulthood.
With the help of whimsical musicians like Bagarre, we are able to talk/sing about masturbation in a fun way. For example, some of the French lyrics translate as follows:
Index finger upside down
Middle finger in the air
Index finger upside down
Middle finger in the air
Glory to self-love
Undress your diamond
You’re not a little girl anymore
Open your eyes, love yourself
Don’t hide, lie down
If we eliminate the taboos surrounding female masturbation, we can make it easier for people, even young girls in rural parts of Texas, to talk about sex openly and intellectually.
Bagarre, which means “brawl” in French, consists of five people who alternate being in the spotlight. Their music is celebrated in the Parisian club scene. Their album Club 12345 was released this year.
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