When I found out I was pregnant, my first thought was, Will I keep it? Then I remembered I live in Texas and shifted to a choice a woman is allowed to make: Will I let this kid have screen time? I’m a realist, so obviously. But there’d be none of that filthy CocoMelon crap. No way. Instead, I’d present my toddler with only the finest art: the music video for Prodigy’s “Smack My Bitch Up.”
What loving mother wouldn’t do this for her child? And how irresponsible and, frankly, perverted, are those mothers who choose to get their kids hooked on CocoMelon, the intellectual equivalent of rat poison? All those freaky cartoon kids with their sleazebag song about intergenerational shark hunting? What a twisted world we live in to normalize such revolting antics.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Smack My Bitch Up” is almost too intelligent and too poignant for a baby brain. The fighting, the puking, the drinking, the drugging, the tits, the ass…all shot on a 35 mm film camera! It’s a lot. But it’s also, at its core, a very charming and relatable story set to a tender lullaby. Please don’t assume your kid won’t “get” it. Allow them to be brilliant. I mean, the band is called Prodigy.
As for my little MacGulliver? Well, he just turned two, and we’ve watched “Smack My Bitch Up” every single day since. He goes crazy for it—bawls and turns beet red every time!
I wish other parents were as open to sharing Prodigy’s finest and most endearing work with their toddlers. But people can be mean. Especially mommies. For example, when I put “Smack My Bitch Up” on for her three-year-old, Mommy Diane poured a glass of mommy juice on my head. And in a bathtub, which is a nonnegotiable mommy safe space.
“Really?” I snapped, through a stream of sweet Zinfandel tears. “You’d rather expose Raphaelo to the literally sickening, depraved hellhole that is CocoMelon?”
Mommy Diane grimaced.
“Actually, I forbid both ‘Smack My Bitch Up’ and CocoMelon,” she said. “We watch ‘Closer’ by Nine Inch Nails. The monkey is so cute, and it’s nice to see animals treated nicely for once.”
I realized I had overstepped. It’s not for me to decide what media other parents bring their children up on, just so long as it’s something super fucked up and from the ‘90s. If Diane wants to raise her child up on the Francis Bacon-inspired macabre of ‘Closer’ that’s her business. Just as long as she recognizes that over here, we’re a ‘Smack My Bitch Up’ house.
