The reality television series Cops is still running on TV In the ‘90s it was one of the most-watched reality shows. Nowadays, the episodes that are available on regular TV have aged, but new episodes are available on paying platforms.
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“Bad Boys” is the theme tune for the show; it is rather catchy. Here are the lyrics.
Catchy, but repetitive. Particularly this refrain: “Bad boys, bad boys, What you gonna do? What you gonna do when they come for you?”
Maybe when the show hit the airwaves to great acclaim decades ago, gender parity wasn’t in the forefront of national consciousness, at least to the extent it pollutes today’s public discourse. Besides, back then “bad boys” were much more responsible for street crime.
Nowadays, there are bad girls everywhere. These figures are stark: arrest rates for women were 38% higher in 2019 than in 1980. Perhaps more startling is that women’s share of total arrests rose from 14% to 27% in the period 1980 to 2025.
That’s a lot of bad girls needing discipline, even if it has to be at the long arm of the law. And it certainly provides plenty of fodder for the producers of Cops. Indeed, many episodes feature crimes that bad girls tend to commit: property crime, larceny, public nuisance, domestic disturbances, etc. As for that last one, while the bad girls can’t smite like the bad boys, they sure do spite and provoke a lot of disturbances.
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At the beginning of each Cops episode, a commanding male voice references the “men and women of law enforcement.” So, how many women are in the police force? By 2020, about 14% of full-time officers were women, which is far less than the percentage of crimes bad girls inflict on society.
Some may think that’s too many female police officers (for various reasons, including physical attributes), but that’s a different story. The point here is that the show’s producers go to great feminist pains to emphasize the women of law enforcement. By contrast, the show’s dated theme tune perpetuates the “bad boy” cliché.
Put another way: the rates of “bad girl” behavior are much higher than the rates of female police officers. Yet, even new episodes of Cops are accompanied by the “Bad Boys” theme tune.
Ultimately, when one thinks about it, it further proves their real inequality. In their case, what’s good for the goose is not good for the gander. In a sense, they can’t handle the truth. They mention women in a positive light when it is convenient, but are unconcerned about the sexist theme tune.
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Image: Langley Productions