Labour & Pop Culture: Working from Home

This week’s installment of Labour & Pop Culture is “Work from Home” by Fifth Harmony. At one level, this song is a weak (and occasionally vulgar) double entrendre wherein work is a metaphor for getting busy.

Lyrically, this song is boring. And, as a home worker, I assure you, working at home is nothing like this—it is mostly about unloading the dishwasher while trying to pay attention on a conference call.

Visually, though, the video is worth a look. A couple of things stood out for me:

1. Work is blue collar: The “work” featured in the video is construction (maybe they are building a mall or condo complex?). It would be interesting to know why construction work was chosen to represent work (besides the availability of lots of phallic symbols). Is it because the director sees work as quintessentially blue collar and manual?

2. Work is a thing men do: Construction is one of the most gendered occupations going and all of the “real” workers in this video are men. The only women in the video are singing and distracting the “workers”. In this way, the song constructs work as a male activity while women are cast as hyper-sexualized playmates.

3. Work is white: Recognizing that race is a social construct, a quick spin through the video reveals that none of the “workers” are of colour (despite the profound ethnic diversity among the members of Fifth Dimension). The only non-white guy is Ty Dolla $ign who appears to reinforce the “this song is about having sex with women” message.

That the music industry uses and reinforces stereotypes is hardly an earth-shattering revelation. Yet the brazen sexism and racism in the video is striking and likely reinforces the social norms that contribute to minimal female participation in the construction industry and, more broadly, defining women in narrow, sexualized terms.



I ain't worried 'bout nothin'
I ain't wearin' na nada
I'm sittin' pretty, impatient, but I know you gotta
Put in them hours, I'mma make it harder
I'm sending pic after picture, I'mma get you fired

I know you're always on the night shift
But I can't stand these nights alone
And I don't need no explanation
'Cause baby, you're the boss at home

[CHORUS]

You don't gotta go to work, work, work, work, work, work, work
But you gotta put in work, work, work, work, work, work, work
You don't gotta go to work, work, work, work, work, work, work
Let my body do the work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work
We can work from home, oh, oh, oh-oh
We can work from home, oh, oh, oh-oh

Let's put it into motion
I'mma give you a promotion
I'll make it feel like a vacay, turn the bed into an ocean
We don't need nobody, I just need your body
Nothin' but sheets in between us, ain't no getting off early

I know you're always on the night shift
But I can't stand these nights alone
And I don't need no explanation
'Cause baby, you're the boss at home

[CHORUS]

[Ty Dolla $ign:]
Girl, go to work for me
Can you make it clap, no hands for me?
Take it to the ground, pick it up for me
Look back at it all over me
Put in work like my timesheet
She ride it like a '63
I'mma buy her no Celine
Let her ride in a foreign with me
Oh, she the bae, I'm her boo
And she down to break the rules
Ride or die, she gon' go
I won't judge, she finesse
I pipe up, she take that
Putting overtime on your body

[CHORUS]

Yeah, we can work from home
Yeah, we can work from home
Yeah

-- Bob Barnetson