Over 21 million people have viewed the “‘Slap her’: Children’s Reactions” video on YouTube since it was posted on January 4th. A media group in Italy recruited young boys who were given a set of directions that they didn’t know beforehand. The video was meant to be a PSA teaching adults a lesson about domestic violence, but I would argue that the group didn’t do such a good job.
The video begins by introducing the boys’ names, ages, and dream jobs. I don’t know how asking what their dream jobs were was relevant to the message that the video was trying to send, but I gave it the benefit of the doubt and attempted to disregard this as I continued to watch. The director then asked each of the kids why their dream jobs were their dream jobs, and I stared at my screen as my annoyance increased, waiting for the video to pick up.
The background music suddenly pauses. The director says, “And this is Martina…” The boys look wide-eyed as an angelic sound welcomes her into the screen. Martina stands in front of each of the boys and says nothing. The boys stare at her. Some nervously giggle, while others look around uncomfortably.
The director then asks, “What do you like about her?” This question really bothered me. Martina has not even opened her mouth, and the boys were encouraged to judge a book by its cover, which is usually frowned upon. She doesn’t get a chance to introduce herself or state her dream job as the boys did, which would give her more of a human quality. Instead, she is silent and thus acts as the object of desire. The first boy says, “I like her eyes,” which probably provoked a lot of “awww”-filled responses fom many video viewers, but I remained unimpressed. “Her shoes, her hands,” said another boy, followed by, “Her eyes, her hair.” These answers are entirely superficial. Kids should be taught to like someone for who they are, not for the way they look.
When one boy declares, “Everything,” I could have sworn my fists clenched as my inner feminist wanted to jump out of my body. How could he possibly like everything about her? He’s looked at her for two minutes tops. I know that they’re just kids, but why are we promoting this as good practice by letting this kind of video go viral? Another boy then tells little Martina that he wants to be her boyfriend. We need to teach children that relationships are based on so much more than appearance; they are about sharing a connection with someone on an emotional level. What the boy said may sound cute, but supporting this can set kids up to have unhealthy relationships that are formed for all the wrong reasons, which goes against the message of the video.
The director then tells the boys to caress Martina. The boys pet her like a dog as she continues to stand still, passively and seemingly uncomfortable as they reach for her. These touches are incredibly intrusive; men should learn to touch women only who want to be touched and that a woman’s body is of paramount importance and deserves to be respected the same way a man’s body is. The boys were then told to make a funny face at her, and I was happy to find myself actually not angered by this direction.
The final direction is, “Slap her!” The boys stare, confused at the camera and each take a few moments before disobeying the direction, pronouncing that they would not do it. When the director asked why, some of the boys’ answers seemed good to me: “I don’t want to hurt her,” “Jesus doesn’t want us to hit others,” “Because I’m against violence,” and “Because it’s bad.” However, others horrified me: “Because she’s a girl,” “Because you’re not supposed to hit girls,” and “First of all, I can’t hit her because she’s pretty and she’s a girl.” But what if little Martina were not pretty but instead were deemed chubby or ugly by these boys? Or better yet, what if little Martina was really little Martin? If she were a boy, would they have swung at him, or would they have restrained themselves in the same way?
When one boy says, “Because I’m a man,” I find that this answer is open to interpretation. Is it manly not to hit or manly not to hit only women? I wish he would have elaborated on that, but if he were asked to and did clarify his statement, the video would have been even more staged than it already was.
In theory, the video was great. The children were cute, the background music was motivational, the production quality was well done. But I tend to over analyze things, which really isn’t such a bad thing. I decided to write this article because I felt very strongly that there was a better message that could have been sent through a modified version of this video, and that message is that all violence is bad. Personally, I think this video did more harm than good and desperately needs a follow-up video to correct it.