You Can Pay Your Own Bills : Exploring Money and Gender Roles Essay Sample

📌Category: Gender Equality, Life, Personal finance, Social Issues
📌Words: 653
📌Pages: 3
📌Published: 13 April 2022

$547,000,000; as of 2021 that is the combined net worth of Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, Kelly Rowland, LeToya Luckett, and Kandi Burruss—the former members of the group Destiny’s Child—five hundred forty seven million; that’s over half a billion dollars. With that amount of money, the thought of needing another person to pay for things seems almost comical. According to their song, Bills, Bills, Bills, that is just not the case. In their song the idea of a woman being the provider is absurd. For them, that is the purpose of men—to financially support a woman. The dependency on men in this song goes against a feminist idea and perpetuates the patriarchial narrative that a woman needs a man to provide for her.

It furthers the narrative that a woman needs to find a rich man. Removing the possibility of a woman being able to provide for herself. Not only does it say that a woman needs a man with a lot of money, it refers to these men as disposable, one coming after the next. As shown in the song: “Silly me/Why haven't I found another/A baller (Destiny's),” the man himself is not what matters—what he can bring, however, does—and that of course, is his money. 

The song perpetuates the belief that to be a true man, one needs to have a lot of money. The idea that a man’s worth is tied to his net worth is dehumanizing and takes away from a man simply being a person. This narrative is pushed on both men and women, although in slightly different ways, the sentiment is the same. For women, it is that a man should be able to provide without her having to contribute. However, for men, preserving the facade of having a lot of money is far more important than the actuality. When the song says: “Going on shopping sprees perpetrating to your friends that you be balling (Destiny’s),” it shows how the idea of a man “balling” is very important to his ability to maintain his status.

The song regards men as something whose only purpose is to be used for their money. Reducing him to only what he can monetarily contribute. Without providing money, to them he is worthless. Throughout the song, the chorus—“Can you pay my bills/Can you pay my telephone bills/Can you pay my automo-bills/If you did then maybe we could chill/I don't think you do/So, you and me are through”—is repeated eight times. In the 4 minutes and 15 seconds that Bills, Bills, Bills runs for, 1 minute and 57 seconds is the chorus. Nearly half of the song is promoting the idea that a woman is dependent on a man to pay her bills.

The song is saying that since she is paying for everything, it would simply be nice to have someone to share the monetary burden with. As Destiny's Child says in Bills, Bills, Bills, “[...]when times get hard need someone to help me out.” They are stating that it is not in fact solely up to a man to provide and that a woman is capable of contributing financially. That however, is not the sentiment that is true throughout the song, when they say “Instead of a scrub like you who don't know what a man's about[...]You're slowly making me pay for/Things your money should be handling (Destiny’s),” it pushes the notion that a man is required to pay for everything. By saying that there are things his “money should be handling,” it makes the woman dependent on the man for everyday necessities and for other material accessories. An ideal that for many, is simply not attainable.

The archaic gendered notion that a woman needs a man to provide for her is still a prominent feature in almost all of the media that we are exposed to today. Be it in the songs we hear, the movies and TV shows that we watch, in the books we read, even in the conversions we have; we cannot escape it. It is an insidious belief, perpetuated by decades of societal pressures and ideologies. 

Works cited

Destiny’s Child. “Bills, Bills, Bills.” The Writing on the Wall, Kevin "She'kspere" Briggs, 1999.

Warner, Brian, et al. “Celebrity Net Worth” Celebrity Net Worth, 2008.

+
x
Remember! This is just a sample.

You can order a custom paper by our expert writers

Order now
By clicking “Receive Essay”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement. We will occasionally send you account related emails.