Disclosures Vol. 3: “Neither: Rethinking Brandy and Monica’s The Boy is Mine”
By: Urfavfilosopher/Polyamorous Black Girl
When we say we want “that 90s R&B” type love, we typically don’t mean the one that shows up in the 1998 hit single “The Boy is Mine”. The standard interpretation of Brandy and Monica’s hit is that it portrays a love triangle involving a “two-timin’” man that has played these women against one another — creating a toxically possessive rivalry between the two. But might there be another interpretation available us? What do the song’s lyrics and music video actually tell us about the ethical status of the non-monogamous dynamic at play?
The song’s standard interpretation is easy enough to make sense of. The dominant discourse around love in America is mononormative. This means that in everyday conversations and mainstream media depictions, love is often depicted as monogamous by default. The idea of the “two-timer”, or more colloquially “the player”, emerges in social contexts where monogamy is valorized and transgressions against it are forbidden. Players and two-timers thus become stigmatic symbols that compulsorily function to push people towards monogamous behavior and monogamous appearances. In perhaps very subtle (and in some cases, perhaps not so subtle) ways, monogamy relies on cheating fundamentally to bolster its legitimacy. Players and two-timers are a measuring stick against which normal lovers can evaluate their morals against.
Readers should note that both in the song and its standard interpretation, racial, sexual, and gendered dynamics are at play. For example, the object of the two singer’s affections is a Black man. When mononormative and heteronormative logics converge, Black men’s transgressions are two-fold. In a society where relationships between one man and one woman are prescribed, Black men are readily made the appropriate subjects for the mark of a lyin’ two-timin player, and “cheater”. The object of Micheal Jackson and Paul McCartney’s affections in their 1982 song “The Girl is Mine”, doesn’t get evaluated in the same ways. Nor do the R&B quartet Xscape in their 1998 song “My Little Secret”. At worst, the Xscape’s members are “home-wrecking sluts/ho’s”. In Jackson and McCartney’s case, the woman plays a passively innocent role in the confusion that has arisen between the two men.
Under the standard interpretation, ‘the boy’ in “The Boy is Mine”, is manipulative and creates the landscape for competition between two Black women. However, a closer look at the lyrics and visual don’t provide a straightforward pathway to this conclusion. The song’s spoken prelude is undoubtedly framed as a confrontation where Brandy informs Monica of her relationship with ‘the boy’ (who remains nameless throughout), giving rise to a conversation about possession and ownership between them.
Both singer’s are tonally accusatory with each requesting that the other “give it up” because they’ve “had about enough”. Both Brandy and Monica incriminate the other for confusion about the nature of their relationship to ‘the boy’. Neither of them attribute ‘the boy’ for being responsible for this confusion. Brandy says to Monica “There is no way you could mistake/ him for your man, are you insane?”, seemingly blaming Monica for this confusion.
We learn that the relationships ‘the boy’ has are separate — or what polyamorists call “parallel” relationships — and that each relationship is meaningful, even if they aren’t formal romantic relationships. He’s told Brandy “He couldn’t make it through the day” without her. Monica is convinced that he doesn’t “wanna change something that’s so good.” The video depicts ‘the boy’ lovin’ up on each of the women separately, but contains very little visual support that he has lied to or manipulated these women. Listeners assume that the coexistence of these relationships is illicit in spite of there being straightforward evidence for that conclusion. However, sustaining parallel relationships is a common practice among Black non-monogamists. The standard interpretation uncritically places blame on ‘the boy’ without considering the possibilities that (1) both women might have recently gone on dates with him and that he has no formal romantic relationship with either; (2) the women may be arguing because one of them dated him earlier and the other is dating him now (“when will you get the picture/ you’re the past, I’m the future”); or (3) that ‘the boy’ has been honest with each of them about the existence of the parallel relationships, and the women still do not get along.
Instead, these scenarios might reveal how patriarchy, hetero-, and mononomativities converge to give rise to a culture of possessiveness and competition among black women in non-monogamous configurations that needn’t be unethical. For example, internalized patriarchy among women might just as easily lead to a romantic or sexual battlefield. Psychologist Noam Shapancer writes that “As women come to consider being prized by men their ultimate source of strength, worth, achievement, and identity, they are compelled to battle other women for the prize.” In his writing on the marriage decline among Black folks, Ralph Richard Banks attributes some of the competition among heterosexual Black women to their facing a “tighter relationship market” than other groups because there are too few eligible Black men for them to partner with. These considerations allude to the possibility of a fierce battle between Brandy and Monica over who possesses (read as “owns”) ‘the boy’ absent any evidence of unethicality on ‘the boy’’s behalf.
Our analysis is not intended to overlook the fact that some Black men do exploit hetero- and mononormative markets. In hetero- and mononormative societies an odd asymmetry arises in how we evaluate violtaions of sexual or romantic norms. In patriarchal societies, male privilege often comes in the form of men remaining unsanctioned and celebrated for violating norms that women are sanctioned for. As a result, being a player can sometimes carry positive judgements, as some folks find being a player “cool” and “manly”. It is from this point that the standard interpretation gets its strength.
We aren’t suggesting that ‘the boy’ was, in fact, behaving ethically around his non-monogamy. As a result, the standard interpretation still has some teeth. What we have intended, however, is to point out that the standard interpretation is often adopted unreflectively, even in the absence of evidence that points to its conclusion. Viewing Brandy and Monica’s work through a lens that is familiar to Black non-monogamists introduces an alternative way to understand the relational dynamics at play. One that needn’t position Black men necessarily as cheaters, players, and two-timers, but that instead foregrounds the complexity of independent systems of oppression such as patriarchy, hetero-, and mononormativity, in the deliberative complexity of understanding what love is and what it might be.
PBG Peace Sign Emoji, and Urfav looking philosophically into the distance.
