So the upside is there’s no regret for bringing the term ‘booty call’ to the world in the first place, it’s the fact that Bill Bellamy didn’t trademark the term in the first place, especially since after it was out and being used everywhere it was one of the hottest sayings of the 90s and it’s still used today every now and then. A booty call is, as a lot of people hopefully know when a guy attempts to get a girl to come by for a physical encounter. But the point of it is made in the term, one has to call to actually make it work. These days people might get a text or a message on whatever service they’re using, or just use Tinder and try to hook up with someone. Quite a few people don’t even make phone calls in this day and age, but back in the day, it was absolutely needed since even in the 90s, a phone call was still the best way to get hold of someone apart from meeting them in person.
The things that were so popular in the 90s have been coming back here and there over the past couple of years, but the booty call, whether it’s still a popular term or not, is something that’s been changed by technology in a big way. These days the idea of video chats and other such methods that people have access to have almost made the term slip into the background since it’s no longer as prominent as it used to be. Had Bill trademarked it, well, it’s still easy to think that it might not have survived the years since one can imagine what some people happen to think about the term and many other terms that carried over into the 90s and were created in that decade. A lot of folks these days tend to think that the 90s, the 80s, and pretty much any decade that came before were toxic in one way or another since they allowed such things as a booty call to exist.
Is booty call demeaning to women? It kind of depends on who a person asks, since pretty much anything can sound wrong coming from a person’s mouth if they have poor delivery and no chance in hell of sounding smooth enough to make it work. But the actual term is something that some folks might actually think reduces women to little more than a sexual escapade. If that’s the idea then it might be time to remind those same folks that a term such as ‘birthing person’ is actually demeaning and not that positive unless one is using it as a punchline for a joke. Otherwise, it reduces women to a vessel, whereas ‘booty call’, which is pretty common among men and women. If you don’t believe that, Google can give you plenty of answers that might remind you that women aren’t just sexual objects, and neither are men. We’re all biological beings with needs that we like to have satisfied whenever possible, so a booty call can work for men and women alike. A birthing person, on the other hand, brings to mind a very disturbing image that is anything but satisfying.
It’s possible that if Bill had trademarked the term that his career might have skyrocketed in a way that he couldn’t have imagined. But it’s also possible that it could have gone another way as well and we wouldn’t even be talking about the term today. Right now it’s impossible to know since this is the path that was taken and the one that we have to comment on. Bill might be kicking himself a bit for not taking action when he could have, but that’s kind of how life goes sometimes, we don’t take the opportunity that’s right in front of us either because we don’t recognize it or we don’t fully appreciate what’s there to be had. It sounds more likely that Bill was simply excited to be on HBO when he came up with the term and wasn’t thinking too much about the popularity it would enjoy after he incorporated it into his act. It’s likely that many ideas such as this were allowed to slip through the fingers of many people over the years since no one really understood what they had and what they could do with it.
But Bill went on to have a pretty successful career despite that and has been known as an endearing actor and comedian for a long time now, so it’s fair to state that he hasn’t really suffered for the loss of a trademark. It might even be a positive thing since there are some ideas that stick around longer if they don’t become trademarked or otherwise limited in their usage.
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