Bad Bunny’s Purplewashing as Gender Violence in Reggaeton: A Feminist Analysis of SOLO DE MI and YO PERREO SOLA

Bad Bunny has skyrocketed to fame in the past few years, gaining worldwide recognition as one of the best reggaetoneros of his time. His self-promoted image as an ally to women’s movements and the Queer community has garnered him the recognition of being a role model for youth and as an anomaly in the misogynistic genre of reggaeton. However, few have looked beyond the assertion of allyship to see if his work truly does support women and anti-gender violence ideology. While scholarship on reggaeton has well documented the prevalence of gender violence in the lyrics, videos and overall culture of reggaeton, it has overlooked the silencing and erasure of women as a key part of the male domination of the genre. This thesis centralises silencing and erasure in Bad Bunny’s work to show how he is “purplewashing”, or using feminist ideologies to cover up the misogynistic aspects of his music. Further, this purplewashing is defined as an act of gender violence as it seeks to draw our attention away from the dangerous sexist ideology that is disseminated through his work.The two main songs and videos that are analysed in this thesis to show that Bad Bunny is purplewashing are ‘SOLO DE MI’ and ‘YO PERREO SOLA.’ In these works, anti- gender violence movements are co-opted by Bad Bunny in order to better promote himself as an ally. However, both works include misogynistic features, like the silencing and erasure of women, which are in direct conflict with and heavily undermine the women’s movements that Bad Bunny claims to support. This thesis shows that although society is quick to label Bad Bunny as a role model for anti-gender violence, his work both contributes to and perpetrates the same misogynistic ideology that leads to gender violence