Music
These women used only TLC lyrics to shut down a subway harasser
by Mark Teo
February 9, 2015
If there’s a better anti-babyman anthem than TLC’s “No Scrubs,” we’ve yet to hear it. Indeed, the deadbeat-shaming single rings just as true today as it did in 1999: Some hapless men are now using Nickelbacking as a strategy to meet women. Ladies are shutting down Facebook creeps using Smash Mouth lyrics. And the pick-up artist subculture has unfolded into the MRA movement, which has resulted in things like the Straight White Guy Fest and men’s rights music galas. The scrub, friends, is alive and well.
So yes, the world needs “No Scrubs,” and we were reminded of its importance when a chorus of women used the anthem to shut down a pesky subway harasser. As Buzzfeed notes, author Olivia Cole saw the event unfolding on a Chicago subway car. When a man insistently demanded that a woman give him her number, she responded in the best way possible—by invoking TLC lyrics. Check out the sequence of events in the gallery above—even the harasser couldn’t help but laugh.
