On May 16, Joe Jonas posted a picture to his public Facebook account with the caption “#Toothbrush video coming very soon…” Having been a fan of Joe and his band of brothers since 2006, I’ve continued to support their solo projects, albeit not as closely as I once did. Under most circumstances, this announcement would have gone in one ear, and out the other -- with only small amounts of excitement registering in my brain. However, the screenshot preview of DNCE’s latest single made me stop scrolling in my tracks.
Pictured with Jonas in the preview is Ashley Graham. Graham rose to fame after giving a TedTalk about body diversity and modeling in Valencia, Spain. Earlier this year, she graced the cover of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue, becoming the first ever model bigger than a size four to be featured by the publication. As a woman with a few extra swerves and curves myself, I was beyond ecstatic to see someone like me represented in a music video.
In a society such as ours, where half of the headlines on magazine covers talk about celebrities gaining weight or getting old, this is a huge statement to make. That’s not to say that body diversity hasn’t been represented in music videos before. Artists of all genres have featured an array of body types in their videos in the past. However, in most instances, voluptuous bodies are fetishized and reduced to objects of lust. Even attempts by artists to create girl power anthems, such as “Anaconda” and “All About That Bass”, failed to focus on more than the ASS-ets of the subject matter. This only succeeded in contributing to a hyper-sexualized view of women with curves.
Though I haven’t seen the video yet, I took the time to listen to the song and analyze its message. The lyrics of the song describe an evolving relationship between the singer and his subject: "We don’t need to keep it hush/You can leave a toothbrush/At my place/'Cause I just, I just can’t let you go/Give me something I never know/So baby you don’t have to rush/You can leave a toothbrush/At my place."
It is not lust of a particular body part, but instead, an appreciation for who the subject is.
With these lyrics in mind, what seems to be so striking about Graham’s role in DNCE’s latest music video is that she is a voluptuous woman being admired for her “messed up hair and feet still bare”. In the preview, we see the gorgeous Graham locked in a caring embrace, with Jonas looking longingly into her eyes (and not at her ass). For perhaps the first time, the implicit message being delivered by the artist is that curvy women are more than just “ass and titties”. We are women who deserve relationships, romance and everything in between.
While the release date of the video is still being kept under wraps, it is apparent that DNCE’s casting choice has the power to make waves in an industry known for objectifying and hyper-sexualizing half of its listener base. As a society, we still have an incredibly long way to go before body diversity is represented via all mainstream media outlets. However, Ashley Graham, DNCE and artists like them will influence the way curvy women everywhere are viewed, hopefully leading to lasting change within the industry, and even more broadly, the world.
