Janelle Monáe - "Water Slide"

Janelle Monáe is a black music artist and actress. Her aesthetic is somewhere between funky-futuristic and hot-girl-summer, depending on what part of her discography you focus on. Her most recent album, The Age of Pleasure, is an epic ode to everything fun, sexy, playful and pleasurable in any way.

Pleasure

This song comes from Janelle Monáe's album Age of Pleasure, and true to the name, each of the songs explores aspects of pleasure. My partner and I have listened to this album more times than I can count.

Beginning of Water Slide music video, lots of ladies dancing in bathing suits and having a heck of a time.

Pleasure isn't just about feeling good, it can be a powerful tool for liberation. "Pleasure activism" advocates for breaking open the world of all things pleasurable - sex, love, drugs, etc. - for people across all classes, genders, races, and of any identity to enjoy. It is also about focusing on one's own pleasure, and the things one finds pleasurable in life, to begin removing the stigma around such things and reclaim them as necessary human rights and experiences. As adrienne marie brown states in Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good:

Pleasure is a feeling of happy satisfaction and enjoyment. Activism consists of efforts 
to promote, impede, or direct social, political, economic, or environmental reform or stasis 
with the desire to make improvements in society. Pleasure activism is the work we do to 
reclaim our whole, happy, and satisfiable selves from the impacts, delusions, and limitations 
of oppression and/or supremacy. Pleasure activism asserts that we all need and deserve pleasure 
and that our social structures must reflect this. In this moment, we must prioritize the 
pleasure of those most impacted by oppression.

This entire album exemplifies pleasure in every song, and "Water Slide" is a prime example. My favorite thing about this music video is how happy it makes me feel to watch it. Janelle Monáe and her fellow dancers look like they are having the best time, and the whole thing is just good vibes.

Janelle and other friends dressed in swim suits dancing around.

All the girls wanna play in it
Boys wanna lay in it
But I'ma spend the day in it
And take a real cute photo

What pleasure activism means to me is the advocation for pleasure as more than an unnecessary pastime, but a requirement for living a happy and healthy life. Janelle Monáe blatantly tells us about her plans to spend an entire day doing nothing but pleasurable things, and this reinforces the notion that there is nothing shameful about prioritizing our pleasure needs. Rather, her insistence upon spending her entire day like this nudges us in the direction of believing that one should be proud of that fact, rather than feel ashamed.

In "Water Slide," Janelle Monáe tells us to spend our time loving each other and ourselves. The video features black dancers of all body types, and everybody looks sunny and happy and beautiful in their bodies. The song is its own form of activism, telling the viewer to go out, have fun, and don't look back.

Identity & Self Love

A picture of Janelle Monáe with a superimposed quote, "I know who I am. I know my journey. And I don't have to declare anything." She is wearing a futuristic white dress with a black collar and fishnet tights, sitting on an orange couch with a white background.

Janelle Monáe is expressive of her sexuality throughout this album, especially in "Water Slide." She identifies herself as pansexual and nonbinary but prefers to end the labels there. She expresses a desire to be true to herself without having to define what that means to other people.

"Water Slide" is a blast from the fun-loving side of the earth, where all identities, all bodies, all people can come together and just love being alive. Honestly, I find that it reminds me about what's important in my life. What is life without pleasure?

When I think about it, I find that I have the same pull away from labels that Janelle Monáe expresses. I don't want to define myself, I just want to love myself - that's what really matters to me.