Both Jean Kilbourne’s article “The More You Subtract, The More You Add: Cutting Girls Down to Size” and Imani Perry’s article “Who(se) Am I? The Identity and Image of Women in Hip Hop” discuss the portrayal of women in mass media. While Kilbourne gives more attention to the size of women and the relationship between the media’s images of women and the number of cases of eating disorders and body image, Perry focuses more on the identities presented in these texts.
I want to focus on the issue that Perry raises about the image and identities of women in the music industry, particularly the hip-hop and R&B genre. As soon as she began discussing the women in this industry, I thought of Ashanti. She
was a popular artist about five years ago. She was the female voice of Murder, Inc, a record label most known for rapper Ja Rule. She also worked with other male artists such as Fat Joe and Nelly. Bringing a “feminine side” to the male dominated genre, she held her own in a man’s world while still maintaining her womanhood. Typical rap and hip-hop videos created by men consisted of the exact image that Perry portrayed. Generally, they were considered degrading towards women because they showed them as sex objects. Perry puts it nicely saying
“women are commodified. They appear in the videos quite explicitly as property, not unlike the luxury cars, Rolex watches, and platinum and diamond medallions that were also featured. The male stars of the videos do not get these legions of women because of charisma or sexual prowess. Rather, they are able to buy them because they are wealthy.”
In many videos, the women are simply standing around dancing. They have no real purpose other than to be sexy to show how incredible the man rapping is. Many times, they are gawked at for their beauty and are usually wearing little to no clothing. They are literally symbols of sex. This image could easily convey the idea to young girls watching that women are to be looked at and judged based on their physical appearance alone.
As I was reading into this article I completely agreed with Perry. I do believe these women are being objectified and used solely for the reasoning “sex sells.” I also think, however, that having a woman be able to break into that industry, as Ashanti did, changes the way in which women are portrayed. As much as I thought this, I didn’t really know if it was true or not, so I looked at two examples of mainstream videos in this genre.
First, I looked at “What’s Love” by Fat Joe featuring Ashanti. In the video, there are many images of women dressed provocatively and dancing around as Perry suggests. However, Ashanti has her own crew of men dancing with her. The women dancing around Fat Joe as he sings are dressed with more fabric than usual and have male partners. Although this allows for sexual innuendos in the choreography, it at least is evenly portrayed. The video has some semblance of plot, although I have no idea what that plot has to do with the actual song. In general, I feel like this video shows the ideas that Perry brings up, but in a very mild fashion.
Next, I looked up a video by Fat Joe without Ashanti’s presence to see if it had an effect on the women portrayed in the video. Looking at the video for “Lean Back,” I found that the sexual images in “What’s Love” were absolutely nothing compared to the images in “Lean Back.” Although the premise of the two songs are different which could explain some of the images seen in the video, I find this video to be unbelievably sexualized, so I apologize that it's so obsence. Almost every image in this video is a reference to sex, some more explicitly than others. I couldn’t find a clean version or MTV version of this video which makes me think it appeared as is on television and that’s a scary thought. This video is so close to the description of female images that Perry describes that she could have been describing this video when writing her article. There are random women wearing skin tight clothing that covers little to none of her body or is worn in a sexually explicit way simply dancing around or throwing money around. I do not understand the purpose of having a woman simply dancing in the same frame as Fat Joe while he is rapping. She does nothing other than show that he could pay enough money to get her to do that, as Perry suggests.
Although the content of the two videos is different lyrically, the fact that such differences could occur between the image and portrayal of women in two videos by the same artist baffles me. While there is a female rapping in the “Lean Back” video, I do not consider her in the same way that I do Ashanti, only because her lyrics could easily have been said by a man and the song would have been conveyed the same meaning. At least with Ashanti’s addition to the song, she provides a softer side with a different, in this case, feminine tone to the song. Now I am someone who believes that a woman can do anything a man can do and there is something to be said that the woman could rap the lyrics in “Lean Back” and it is okay; however, for this issue, I believe Ashanti does something different. Instead of just being physically a woman and doing exactly what the man is doing, as I would categorize the other woman, she is creating the element of a duet and giving a female voice rather than a continuation of the man’s point, as she did throughout her career. Instead of being exactly like the men around her, she gave the females a chance to have that same confidence and swagger, yet still remain feminine.
I want to focus on the issue that Perry raises about the image and identities of women in the music industry, particularly the hip-hop and R&B genre. As soon as she began discussing the women in this industry, I thought of Ashanti. She
was a popular artist about five years ago. She was the female voice of Murder, Inc, a record label most known for rapper Ja Rule. She also worked with other male artists such as Fat Joe and Nelly. Bringing a “feminine side” to the male dominated genre, she held her own in a man’s world while still maintaining her womanhood. Typical rap and hip-hop videos created by men consisted of the exact image that Perry portrayed. Generally, they were considered degrading towards women because they showed them as sex objects. Perry puts it nicely saying“women are commodified. They appear in the videos quite explicitly as property, not unlike the luxury cars, Rolex watches, and platinum and diamond medallions that were also featured. The male stars of the videos do not get these legions of women because of charisma or sexual prowess. Rather, they are able to buy them because they are wealthy.”
In many videos, the women are simply standing around dancing. They have no real purpose other than to be sexy to show how incredible the man rapping is. Many times, they are gawked at for their beauty and are usually wearing little to no clothing. They are literally symbols of sex. This image could easily convey the idea to young girls watching that women are to be looked at and judged based on their physical appearance alone.
As I was reading into this article I completely agreed with Perry. I do believe these women are being objectified and used solely for the reasoning “sex sells.” I also think, however, that having a woman be able to break into that industry, as Ashanti did, changes the way in which women are portrayed. As much as I thought this, I didn’t really know if it was true or not, so I looked at two examples of mainstream videos in this genre.
First, I looked at “What’s Love” by Fat Joe featuring Ashanti. In the video, there are many images of women dressed provocatively and dancing around as Perry suggests. However, Ashanti has her own crew of men dancing with her. The women dancing around Fat Joe as he sings are dressed with more fabric than usual and have male partners. Although this allows for sexual innuendos in the choreography, it at least is evenly portrayed. The video has some semblance of plot, although I have no idea what that plot has to do with the actual song. In general, I feel like this video shows the ideas that Perry brings up, but in a very mild fashion.
Next, I looked up a video by Fat Joe without Ashanti’s presence to see if it had an effect on the women portrayed in the video. Looking at the video for “Lean Back,” I found that the sexual images in “What’s Love” were absolutely nothing compared to the images in “Lean Back.” Although the premise of the two songs are different which could explain some of the images seen in the video, I find this video to be unbelievably sexualized, so I apologize that it's so obsence. Almost every image in this video is a reference to sex, some more explicitly than others. I couldn’t find a clean version or MTV version of this video which makes me think it appeared as is on television and that’s a scary thought. This video is so close to the description of female images that Perry describes that she could have been describing this video when writing her article. There are random women wearing skin tight clothing that covers little to none of her body or is worn in a sexually explicit way simply dancing around or throwing money around. I do not understand the purpose of having a woman simply dancing in the same frame as Fat Joe while he is rapping. She does nothing other than show that he could pay enough money to get her to do that, as Perry suggests.
Although the content of the two videos is different lyrically, the fact that such differences could occur between the image and portrayal of women in two videos by the same artist baffles me. While there is a female rapping in the “Lean Back” video, I do not consider her in the same way that I do Ashanti, only because her lyrics could easily have been said by a man and the song would have been conveyed the same meaning. At least with Ashanti’s addition to the song, she provides a softer side with a different, in this case, feminine tone to the song. Now I am someone who believes that a woman can do anything a man can do and there is something to be said that the woman could rap the lyrics in “Lean Back” and it is okay; however, for this issue, I believe Ashanti does something different. Instead of just being physically a woman and doing exactly what the man is doing, as I would categorize the other woman, she is creating the element of a duet and giving a female voice rather than a continuation of the man’s point, as she did throughout her career. Instead of being exactly like the men around her, she gave the females a chance to have that same confidence and swagger, yet still remain feminine.
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