The Gender-Swapped ‘Blurred Lines’ Video Is Suddenly Age-Restricted

Mod Carousel’s fantastic gender-swapped “Blurred Lines” parody (which we posted the other day) has been saddled with an 18+ age restriction on YouTube since going viral. Interestingly—or maybe not, I’m not quite sure—Robin Thicke’s original video is still up on YouTube with no age restriction.

Now, Mod Carousel’s version is a direct parody of Thicke’s unrated video, which features topless ladies cavorting in flesh-colored thongs. The women in Thicke’s, uh, rated original are wearing big white briefs, not thongs. So, I suppose, the be-thonged male performers of Mod Carousel are technically wearing less clothing than the women in the non-age-restricted “Blurred Lines” video. Although Thicke’s video does contain some footage from the unrated version, which means thongs do appear from the side.

So WTF? Why was Mod Carousel flagged as 18+? Does YouTube have an explicit “no thongs” rule? (If it does, Sisqo remains unaffected.) Or is this some weird combination of the normalization of female objectification (i.e. women are supposed to be naked and sexualized); latent homophobia (men aren’t supposed to express femininity); and/or discomfort with unapologetic queerness (nonconformers aren’t supposed to be that happy)? I really don’t know.

Here are some screengrabs taken from the kid-appropriate Thicke video and the grownups-only Mod Carousel video.