Shakira and Gerard Pique at the 2019 US Open in September 2019. Presumably that's not a Casio on his wrist. Photo / Gotham, GC Images
Shakira and Gerard Pique at the 2019 US Open in September 2019. Presumably that's not a Casio on his wrist. Photo / Gotham, GC Images
Opinion by Robert Shrimsley
OPINION:
The lips don’t lie. The pop-star Shakira is seriously seething at the ex-partner who ditched her for a younger woman and is venting her fury in a “diss track” aimed at her faithless footballer. The self-proclaimed she-wolf has delighted her fans, everyone who has ever been at the wrongend of a bad break-up and those labouring under the misapprehension that revenge songs are a way to reclaim power.
Her ex-boyfriend, the former Barcelona defender Gerard Piqué, is mocked as dim, shallow and unappreciative of the person he has forsaken. I’m not best placed to figure out where the fault lies for the split, though one’s prejudice is always against the bloke who allegedly ditched the 45-year-old mother of his children for a 23-year-old student.
Personally, I’ve always thought happiness is a better revenge than parading your pain, but the song has done amazingly well, racking up more than 100 million views on YouTube. And yet I worry about some of the lyrics, in particular the couplet where she dismisses Piqué and his new flame with the words, “You traded a Ferrari for a Twingo/You traded a Rolex for a Casio”. Piqué has since responded by mockingly posing with both.
The premise is that he lacks the class to carry off luxury goods, just as he lacks the confidence to love a strong woman. This, obviously, is where the track goes wrong. If Piqué were indeed a Twingo and Casio guy, which as a top-flight footballer seems doubtful, then this would be a clear point in his favour, the sign of a well-grounded man whose head is not turned by shallow consumerism.
While the man who dumps his partner for one half her age is obviously suspect, the man who has the money for fast cars and flash watches but who chooses the other options is clearly a keeper. More sensible, practical and, dare I say it, probably more faithful.
Why pick an expensive, ostentatious, clunky watch over a lightweight functional option that doesn’t get you mugged? As for the Ferrari, again, Shakira goes wrong. It may seem fun in your twenties, but the ideal man is driving a Škoda. The Twingo is a bit dinky, but compared with a Ferrari, it is cute, kinder to the environment, better suited to city living and far easier to park. One other advantage of the Twingo is that you do not have to worry about scraping your undercarriage every time you turn into a driveway.
And speaking of undercarriages and the penchant for fast cars, I was naturally delighted to read this week about a new survey suggesting that men with flash sports cars are less well fitted-out in the trouser department.
"We family car-owners cheered on Greta Thunberg’s 'small dick energy' jibe at professional misogynist Andrew Tate after he boasted to her about his range of sports cars." Photo / Getty Images/File
For motorists like me whose list of vehicles runs from Mini Metros to small Škodas, surveys like this validate your life choices, pander to your prejudices and offer the dream of a world in which sex-hungry she-wolves walk up to you in a bar and utter those immortal words, “I need a man who drives a Twingo.”
We family car-owners cheered on Greta Thunberg’s “small dick energy” jibe at professional misogynist Andrew Tate after he boasted to her about his range of sports cars.
So I’ve always hoped this sort of story is true but have never really wanted to do the research myself. The survey, it has to be said, was a curious affair, relying not on raw data but on a set of trick questions designed to expose consumer attitudes and personal insecurities. Apparently, the more insecure the participant was made to feel, the more instantly he lurched towards the Ferrari. There doesn’t appear, sadly, to be equivalent research into the drivers of saloons and hatchbacks. It may be that they are every bit as deficient but lack the funds to compensate for it.
But let’s not carp. It’s good to see our academics engaged in this sort of cutting-edge analysis. In China, teams are wasting their time on quantum computing, but London has cornered the market on research in overcompensating males. Meanwhile, Shakira needs to reframe her lyrics and forget about the Ferraris. The data show that real men drive Twingos.
