Macho Man

Many of us may know the song by the Village People, Macho Man, I know I have heard this song before and bopped and danced along to it, but have we really listened to it and interpreted it?The song's lyrics are so superficial. It begins with a question- "wanna feel my body baby?" I promise that any man who asks a random girl this question will immediately get turned down. This is no way to speak to a woman, let alone put in a song and especially LEAD with it. It then repeats that same line over and over and over. It replies with "check out my body" and other lines about how great his body is. This is not even the first verse yet, just the intro, and it is already problematic. The first verse begins with "Every man wants to be a macho macho man." as if this isn't bad enough, it goes on to explain what it entails to be a "macho macho man," including jogging (specifically in the mornings) and working out until you get glowing muscles. The chorus goes on to basically just repeat the words "macho man" over and over, but a particular line that stands out is "I've got to be a macho man." The rest of the song basically just says the words "body," "hey," and "macho" over and over and over and over. They are making a guide on how to be this big strong man, which is what a real man is in their eyes, and they have to live up to this standard so much that they wrote an entire song about it. They are literally profiting off of their need to share their internalized toxic masculinity.