Shakira’s Ex Plans to ‘Keep Doing What I Want’

Epic jaw drop on my part. Go go go Gerard! Straight to the bottom. Hit bedrock. Light stick of dynamite. Hold on tight now!

Gerard Pique is all sorts of yuck. And his scmoopie has nothing on Shakira. 🤮🤮
Water has indeed found its own level.

More from his interview: “The people that I love and care about are the ones who know me. The rest isn’t important to me,” he continued. “I spend my energy on being with my loved ones and giving them what I have.”

Uh, what about the two little kids?

So funny that Casio called him out and said there was no deal, yet thanked Shakira for mentioning them.

I snorted when I got down to the Princess Bride meme… “You keep using that word…” TOO FUNNY!

We all know Shakira is 100000000 times better than this delusional and entitled fuckwit. Hopefully, she’ll just keep on shining and be the sane parent in addition to being a superstar.

May we all find a way to shine bright today. Never let a cheater dim your brilliance. You’ve got this (and they’ve got their delusions.)

It’s such striking confirmation that no chump can ever be enough to please a cheater – that it’s in their character; not something we could have been fixed by working harder or being more beautiful.

Wow. I actually teared up seeing how Shakira fans in Fallon’s audience– male and female– were singing in unison and doing all of Shakira’s hand gestures from the original music video. To be honest, celebrity worship and fan behavior mostly scare me but it’s like these people aren’t so much fawning over Shakira as owning their own expression of the song as if it’s an anthem for some political movement and the enthusiasm is like they’re throwing off the chains of bondage or something. I’m not sure they’d be as enthusiastic if the lyrics and meaning were different.

It’s all making me wonder if monogamy and fidelity are becoming that embattled. I don’t mean embattled in terms of being a religious value (“living in sin” vs. marrying) but in the sense of the typical, simple human wish to find someone compatible who they can love and trust for life. Pair bonding. Are people losing interest in that or simply hope for it? There are different reasons given for the plummeting rate of marriage and cohabitation around the world but polls usually boil it down to economic constraints and not wanting to have destructive relationships, which sounds more like lost hope than lost interest. The fact that Shakira’s song broke so many records might also suggest the modern single-by-choice trend is largely about loss of hope, not interest. Maybe that’s why the singing fans remind me weirdly of Arab Spring celebrations.

I could actually make an argument that there’s something political in this issue (and anyone who knows me knows I’ll try). For instance, the explosive popularity of the song might explain why the media is wagging the dog so hard and shoving cheating apologias down our throats so relentlessly. In other words, it’s as if the media is setting out to kill the very common human hope of finding one person to share life with and the response to the song is a public vote for restored hope. Some might say that the song only argues that self esteem isn’t contingent on being in a relationship which it does, but I think it’s more about how being single is preferable to being in a bad relationship. The song’s rebellious cheerfulness suggests hope for whatever one prefers in the future– happy singledom or happily finding a healthy partner. Reducing cheaters to “tipos” or types suggests the alternative exists and outnumbers the duds.

Not to be grandiose but I wonder if the Shakira Bizarrap “experiment” just argued for the idea that monogamy is a stubborn hardwired human value and trait like recent Gallup polls showed (independent of religious prohibitions, Americans are apparently becoming less and less approving of adultery). But it seems as if certain industrial media sponsors want that not to be so and are seeking to prove– with endless propaganda– a not-so-well-evidenced evolutionary theory that monogamy is an acquired behavior that shifts according to social conditioning. Or so they hope and considering how much it’s being flogged these days in the press, it’s not being left to chance.

Never mind the evolutionary science arguing that humans evolved to be generally monogamous or at least preferring that our partners are monogamous, even the phenomenon of cheating itself makes the same case. Cheaters especially value monogamy, if not in themselves then in their partners. The whole point of cheating and what makes it cheating is to leave the victim believing the contract is still valid and acting accordingly while the cheater does what they want. Concubines in harems of yore would be put to death for having sex with anyone other than the master. Even the recent headlines of cheaters killing their spouses– and the fact that they risk so much for so little– seem like cases of dogs juggling two bones who bury one for fear another dog might get it.

But I suspect the poly/monogamy-is-unnatural theory boosts shareholder confidence in certain industries. For instance, the dating app industry is nearing $6 billion in profits and promises more than 3% annual growth. To continue growing– especially if the population declines and the numbers of single users flattens– the industry arguably needs to increase the number of married users beyond the present 30-40% or increase the rate of divorce (why not both?! Ka-ching). The same is true for the global porn industry which currently pulls in an estimated $15 b in revenue and is valued overall at about $100b– more than any other media source in the world. Currently, about 45% of porn users are married and 30% are women. Those demographics are seen as pliant and the view of monogamy as inborn, monogamy as a religious value and feminism are likely seen as obstacles to future profits.

There are many more industries that profit from pointless materialism or a need for useless distraction driven by misery, fear and insecurity. The degree to which healthy family unity tends to reduce misery and insecurity makes family unity an obstacle to growth as well. That’s not an argument to stay in a bad marriage or that people can’t be happy when single but just to make a point that family relationships, if solid and constructive, generally tend to make people happier and healthier. Research consistently shows that happy people are less materialistic so unstable relationships are good for the bottom line. This provides an interesting “fear sells” subtext to Ashley Madison’s tagline, “Life is short. Have an affair.” Translation: “Be afraid. Be very afraid. Life is meaningless and death is nigh. Bonk randos as a distraction from the terrifying void.”

I’m not only interested in this from the chump perspective but because I spent 13 years researching and writing about the intersection of science and politics for an environmental health publication. I went on a three year bender exploring how the increasing use of expedient, false evolutionary science to promote commercial and political aims– something known as “scientism” in poli sci-speak– has been contributing to global political repression. To avoid being boring and boil it down, scientism is arguably the core of totalitarianism (according to luminaries like Arendt, Popper, Todorov, etc.) and is typically based on various absurd theories of human nature and evolution which happen to serve reigning power in some way. All totalitarian movements, whether left or right, are founded in junk evolutionary science. And it’s important to remember that some of those Utopian evolutionary totalitarian theories like eugenics and Rousseau’s Noble Savage theory spread incrementally and first presented themselves in very benign-seeming, “humanitarian” forms– just like the polyamorous theory of human sexuality.

Like a lot of anti-monogamy and poly proponents, Esther Perel wades into evolutionary science by touching on a popular junk theory that humans evolved in a direct line from the common ancestor of the peaceful, orgy-loving bonobos, not rapey regular chimps. Free love! So groovy! What could be fascist about that?? Easy: bad evolutionary theory + expedient + promoted by powerful interests. The fact that the theory contradicts basic carbon dating coupled with the fact that it arguably serves power and profits make it verge on “scientism.” The danger of promoting unproven science as fact in service of power is obvious. Imagine if gadget companies start funding junk science that, say, defines “tech-neck” as a natural evolution, healthy and even desirable and think of all the horrible ways in which this could effect health and medical practice. Silicone neck hump implants. Physical therapy to contort the spine and spinal surgery to correct straight posture. Smushed organs, nerve damage, shortened lifespan, chronic pain. Basically any attempt to force a false theory of evolution is a disaster.

But the danger of promoting junk science regarding human sexuality isn’t necessarily that it leads to some literal manifestation like ending up in some Brave New World dystopia where we’re not allowed to pair bond and everyone’s forced to bang randos. The key danger of promoting junk science in service to power is the damage to the concept of science itself, the way in which any tidbit of crap theory promoted by power messes up the public’s understanding of science and paves the way towards absolutist science– i.e., science that we’re not allowed to question– which is, by definition, no longer science but a kind of existential religion. Then if you consider that, in modern times, laws and policy are often based on cellular or evolutionary science theory, you can see what this potentially leads to.

Right now the whole poly vs. monogamous nature argument might seem like a social media trifle but, considering that evolutionary scientists argue that war itself is driven by sexual dominance, how is a conceptual war over human sexuality not a powder keg that potentially impacts everything else?

Anyway, that’s all a long way of saying that the collective nerve Shakira struck might run deeper than cheeky breakup song or passing musical trends. There are a ton of cheeky breakup songs but none that broke 14 world records.

I wish she’d write another song about how all cheaters and their cheating partners suck. Or maybe Becky G can do it! Another singer with another FW sports guy.

Be true to yourself, be faithful to yourself. If your characteristics are those of the cheat and the liar, being faithful to yourself means telling everyone up front that that’s who you are. Logically, cheaters and liars should not need to hide their cheating and lying from the rest of the world because they are only being faithful to themselves. They have no need to be ashamed and hide their infidelity. Funny how they make these proud and noble statements about being true and faithful to themselves only when they’ve been caught. That tends to suggest that, all the time they are lying and cheating, they are lying to and cheating on themselves by denying that that’s what they are doing. They are unfaithful even to the faithfulness to themselves they proclaim to the world. In fact they are plain, common liars and cheats who make up stories after they have been exposed to justify their lying and cheating. They are amongst the lower elements.