The video for Erykah Badu's latest single, "Window Seat," is a stunning recrimination of the policing and exploitation of black women's bodies in America. Hey, what a great opportunity to sell a bikini wax!

In the video, Badu walks through the city of Dallas, removing her clothes piece by piece as she passes the city's confused, gawking tourists. Badu's stage is not far from the site of the JFK assassination; the video is shot in the faded colors of the Zapruder film. After she strips down to naked skin—with only blurring pixelation covering her breasts, genitals, and eyes—Badu falls to the ground, and a blue substance reading "GROUPTHINK" oozes from her head.

District beauty salon D'Brows, which offers eyebrow design, eyelash extensions, and a $68 Brazilian bikini wax, decided to capitalize off of the buzz around Badu's video with a promotional press release. "Erykah Badu must have read this before shooting this video," the release said. "Erykah Badu has the confidence that comes with a good waxing and so can you. . . .  Watch this Erykah Badu video [VIDEO] and then arrange your waxing at D'Brows today!!"

A few thoughts:

(a) How could Badu have read this e-mail before shooting her video? This e-mail is about her video.

(b) Since Badu's genitals are obscured by pixels in the video, you really can't tell what's going on down there.

(c) To my knowledge, Badu hasn't delivered her opinions on genital waxing, but she has said this: "I love my natural hair, I love my skin the way it is, I love my breasts the way they are . . . I don't want to be augmented in any way."

(d) Badu hasn't said much about the intent of her video, beyond clarifying that JFK "was one of my heroes, one of the nations heroes . . . He was not afraid to butt heads with America, and I was not afraid to show America my butt-naked truth." But I'll go out on a limb here and say that Badu's message has little to do with razing your pubic mound in order to achieve a socially acceptable vulva, and more to do with defying a social order that exploits black women's bodies as dangerously sexual. Badu's point was confirmed when Dallas police stuck her with a charge of disorderly conduct for performing the shoot in public. John Cheney-Lippold, writing on the differing cultural responses to Badu's video and the similar Matt & Kim video on which "Window Seat" was based, notes that Badu's strip was seen as a disturbing erotic display, while Matt and Kim's disrobing in Times Square was regarded as a childlike and lighthearted stunt:

So is it that our society still reads sexuality through blackness, providing an eroticization of Badu that Matt and Kim’s video doesn’t have? (Yes). Is it that two scrawny naked white musicians can appear to us as childish in Times Square, while one naked black musician can appear dangerous and disorderly in Dallas, Texas? (Yes). And is it that race still matters in our society—that we should constantly think not just of how we personally understand race and racism but how race itself is constructed to mean things other than a group of people with a certain skin color? (Of course). Here’s to hoping Badu fights the disorderly conduct charge.

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(e) In an unrelated note, Wanda Sykes is hilarious:

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"There was never a nipple portrait of Lincoln, I'm sorry."

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"I tell my kids: If two cars pull up, and one of them has a stranger, and the other one has Dick Cheney, you get in the one with the stranger."

On being an in-demand activist:

I’m busy! Gay, gay, gay all the time. I didn’t know it was gonna be thus much work! Geez! Every day, ‘This is something gay, can you do this?' I’ll be there! …And I keep saying gay. I haven’t got all the correct terminology down. So many women come up to me, hard-core lesbians: “Wanda! You gotta stop saying gay! You’re a lesbian!…you’re not gay! Men are gay! You’re a lesbian, you’re a woman!” I’m like calm down dyke I just started this!

On gay marriage opponents:

It’s just amazing to me how people get involved in something that doesn’t concern them. You know, if they would just mind their own damned business…The economy’s all messed up, it’s all about the economy right now. And think of all that money they’re losing (from) gay weddings. Wouldn’t you love to have some of that gay wedding money?

On gay marriage:
“It’s just a relationship. It’s just two people who love each other, just trying to deal with each other and get through life together, that’s all. Just trying to build something together. Relationships are all the same. You’ve got one person who likes to talk a lot and the other person who pretends to listen.”
On Republicans:
“Talk about evil people, they’re just nasty! (Rush Limbaugh) saying, ‘I want the president to fail!’ What kind of bullshit is that? He thinks screw everybody else. Screw everybody, I just want to win! That’s treason, right? I’m like, ‘Let’s not close Guantanamo (Bay), send Rush Limbaugh’s big ass over there! He’s a terrorist!’”
On aging:
“It ain’t fun getting old. It’s not. I don’t consider myself old it’s just little things that happen that people don’t tell you about. The bladder ain’t what it used to be. I used to carry an extra pair of panties in my purse back in the day in case I got lucky. Now it’s in case I sneeze!”