John Mayer, ‘Daughters,’ And Porn
The other day my wife pointed out to me the irony of John Mayer’s song “Daughters” in light of his Playboy interview.
The song is an admonition to fathers to love their daughters well. But when you consider the fact that Mayer is a consumer of women through his rampant indulgence of pornography, it rings a bit hollow.
Consider these lines from Daughters:
So fathers, be good to your daughters
Daughters will love like you do
So is Mayer saying that only fathers need to treat women well? Or does he think that looking at, literally, hundreds of porn images per day is treating women well? Does he not see that the women in those pictures are, as he puts it in the song:
But she’s just like a maze
Where all of the walls all continually change
Then, later in the song, he says this:
On behalf of every man
Looking out for every girl
You are the god and the weight of her world
Really? He’s singing on behalf of “every man” looking out “for every girl?” No.
He’s not looking out for girls, he’s consuming them, capitalizing on their brokenness — the very brokenness he is admonishing fathers to prevent.
This is one of the brutal realities, and subtleties of pornography. What is presented in the pictures is a lie: she looks like she has power and lots of prosperity. But she really is having her sould ravaged by an industry in which she is nothing more than a piece of meat.
And much of her off-camera life is one of being controlled by others who tell her what she will do. More than than, her exposure will not win her the adoration her soul desires. She will not be cherished for who she is. She is only an aparatus for sexual pleasure; that is her only value.
So Mayer supports the mistreatment of women through his use of porn, even while he sings of treating women well as young girls so that they grow up to be healthy adults.
This is the hypocrisy all of us who are addicts must face in ourselves.
Intentional Warriors 
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