YouTube Removes Feminist ‘Blurred Lines’ Parody By Auckland University Students

Update 9:23 am: The video has since been restored to YouTube.

YouTube has removed a feminist parody of Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” video created by three University of Auckland students.

The video, called “Defined Lines,” was pulled from the site after being flagged for inappropriate content. The video featured young men dressed in white underwear and was removed from YouTube because it violated the site’s terms and conditions by displaying sexually explicit content.

Meanwhile, the unrated version of Thicke’s video, which features three topless female models wearing only flesh-colored thongs, remains on the site. It was banned briefly, but quickly reinstated.

In “Defined Lines,” Adelaide Dunn, Olivia Lubbock and Zoe Ellwood sing their own version of the song, with lyrics including, “If you want to get nasty, just don’t harass me. You can’t just grab me. It’s a sex crime. We don’t want it, it’s chauvinistic.” The video received over 300,000 page views before it was removed.

Lubbock, a fifth year law student, said the video was intended to be tongue-in-cheek.

“We had a lot of fun making it and like I said it was part of a comedy sketch so it was always intended to be taken as a bit of a joke,” she said.

Lubbock, Dunn, and Ellwood believe the removal of their video is because of the portrayal of men as sex objects.

But the three university students aren’t the only ones to create a gender-reversed parody of Robin Thicke’s controversial video. In July, Seattle-based “boylesque” troupe Mod Carousel filled in for the female models, complete with thongs and high heels. Singers Caela Bailey, Sydni Devereux, and Dalisha Phillips took over the roles of Thicke, Pharrell, and T.I., respectively.

“It’s our opinion that most attempts to show female objectification in the media by swapping the genders serve more to ridicule the male body than to highlight the extent to which women get objectified and do everyone a disservice,” Mod Carousel wrote in the description of the video on YouTube.

“We made this video specifically to show a spectrum of sexuality as well as present both women and men in a positive light, one where objectifying men is more than alright and where women can be strong and sexy without negative repercussions.”

Incidentally, Justin Timberlake’s “Tunnel Vision” video, which also featured three naked women, was also removed from YouTube briefly before being put back up.