Bad Girls : Women For Women

Director Sut Jhally, in his documentary film, “Dreamworlds 3: Desire, sex, and power in music videos”, analyzes the issue of how women are portrayed in the music world. Jhally, in his film argues how music and media has become a proud industry when it comes to advertising women, all for the benefit of popularity and record sales. Jhally believes these videos both inform and misinform our culture about our dominant attitudes regarding femininity masculinity, sexuality and race. He uses an empathetic tone in order to appeal to pathos, the feelings and experiences in women when he presents video clips that are somewhat offensive to watch as proof that women have become a common necessity shown in music videos. Often presented as being sexually aggressive and submissive, being objectified by men. He also intentionally wants to try to stir up emotions as he introduces song lyrics of women being called inappropriate names and images of women being fondled by men throughout the film. Sometimes, aggressively without consent.

Feminists that approach analyzing popular culture proceed from a variety of theoretical positions that carry with them a deeper social analysis and political agenda. Popular culture has been a critical part of feminist analysis. “Cultural politics are crucially important to feminism because they involve struggles over meaning” (Storey, Intro 136). Analyzing a piece of pop culture through a feminist viewpoint, whether it be a music video or any sort of media, opens up a broader discussion about the structure of our patriarchal society and the ways in which politics are constantly portrayed and

Since the explosion of music videos in 1981, a large portion of their popularity has been due to the objectification of women and their sexuality. “Early content analyses showed that anywhere from 40% to 75% of music videos contained sexual imagery”(Arnett, 2002). Hip-hop music videos especially have a reputation of degrading women. In these videos “women are often depicted in positions

Dance communicates a variety of things; it not only entertains but also educates. The way in which and individual dances can contest or propagate ideas. Dance in films, commercials, television and music videos often have underling hegemonic concepts. A way of illustrating this is in Fifth Harmony’s latest music video for their song “Work From Home.” In Fifth Harmony’s music video “Work from Home” featuring Ty Dolla $ign the propagated sexualized idea of femininity through dance is communicated.

In her article “The Venus Hip Hop and the Pink Ghetto: Negotiating Spaces for Women,” Imani Perry argues that the objectification of women in the music industry is normalized in our society. Her purpose is to persuade us that most feminists who fight against the objectification and exploitation of women are ultimately colonized by the sexual fantasies of men. As a law professor at Rutgers Law School, Perry structures her text in a very effective manner. Using a general-to-specific organization scheme, she begins by outlining the recurring image of sexualized women in music videos, then presenting various cases of prominent feminist figures in the music industry.

Intro: Like various art forms such as film, television, and literature allows artists to express their own sense of identity, that being nationality, race, class, ethnicity, gender or sexuality. In this case, Queen uses music to illustrate the themes of gender and sexuality through their music video I Want to Break Free (1983). This essay will attempt to discuss how Queen’s music video, I Want to Break Free, explores queerness in relation to queer theory. Firstly, I will introduce the ideas and arguments of queer theory through Gilbert Herdt article Same Sex Different Cultures (1997). I will then discuss Queen’s portrayal of drag within the music video and how it can be seen as queer rather than heterosexual. Lastly, I will argue that

The Film Dreamworlds III examines the explicit nature and the objectification of women in music videos across music genres. A similar theme is presented throughout these various music videos as women are sexualized and exploited. In addition, many music videos display the domination and antoagonizing nature of a man controlling the numerous women submitting themselves to him. The portrayal of these images in music videos advertise and influence audiences to accept this behavior on screen, which in turn strengthens aggressive masculinity and the pornography of women.

No one expects to hear “used” when they ask a little girl what do you want to be when you grow up? Yet that is the exact expectations society places on them. Jessie Reyez expresses this in her short film and music video “Gatekeeper”. The artifact opposes the societal expectation that women must use their bodies and sexuality to be successful and instead teaches that they must not succumb to the ever present male dominance and can achieve success without dishing away their morals. Exploring the music video and film with a feminist and narrative perspective allows for a deeper look into the role of women and the moral of the story. Her message defying the status quo allows for positive implications where both men and women do not feel forced

Popular culture is often a reflection of society; both literature and the media have the capacity to cement ideas in the minds of readers and viewers. In many cases, the notions and stories glorified by the media refrain from sharing a true depiction of society and are narrow-minded in their focus. Recently, the feminist movement has denounced popular culture for its ignorance, fighting for a more realistic portrait to be painted by those with the power to reach millions. Specifically, both Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “The Danger of a Single Story” share how the classic gender stereotypes seen in popular culture are unable to capture the full spectrum of stories that define society, and are limiting in their portrayals of women. Moreover, both authors share personal stories, reference prominent world figures, and cite relevant statistics in their works. Therefore, in both Bad Feminist and “The Danger of a Single Story”, Roxane Gay and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie appeal to readers pathos, logos, and ethos in order to construct the argument that the single story of women in popular culture is stereotypical and restrictive.

Allen’s music video introduces half-naked women committing sexual acts in a provocative scene to establish the role of women in pop culture as dehumanizing. The scene starts with Allen joining the female dancers, clothed enough to barely cover their genitals, beginning their dance routine. As Allen sings, the dancers are seen performing the twerk, and the video zooms on the dancer’s genitals as the dancers lick their hands and slap their genitals. Allen’s incendiary scene highlights women as needing to be overly sexualized in music videos and performing suggestive behaviors to be included in pop culture. This scene dehumanizes women in music videos because women are expected to behave and dress in a specific manner or not be included in the

Within popular culture today, objectified female bodies can be represented everywhere from advertising images to magazine covers, television, music and many more. Through these media institutions, we allow them to construct social identities in ways that allow us to understand what it means to be black, white, Asian, male or female etc. Within many popular culture mediums such as music, stereotypical representations of racially marked female bodies are often formed. Thus, these representations also have the ability to create stories about a certain culture. In music videos, it does not go unnoticed that women are portrayed as objects whose objectives are to pleasure men. In this paper, I will argue how racially marked female bodies are represented. This paper will mainly focus on how these racially marked women are depicted in the hip hop culture. To demonstrate this, I will draw examples by using award winning music videos by Nicki Minaj, R.Kelly, 50 cent to exemplify representations of the female body and how they are objectified as sex objects. In conclusion, we will be able to see how the female bodies are used in mainstream hip hop videos to convey seductively.

“Nothing is more singular about this generation than its addiction to music” (Bloom 68). While every person in the world knows this to be true, no one stops to consider whether the music society listens to is actually good for the mind. What people don’t realize is that music affects people’s morals, culture, education, laws, and the way society thinks. Music has proved to be helpful, but no one focuses on that aspect of it anymore. The people that music affects the most only care if they can dance to it.

The development of visual media has introduced the concept of The Male Gaze Theory. The Male Gaze Theory is defined as how women are depicted in the media from a male perspective, such as presenting women as sexual objects for men’s pleasure (Loreck). The article, inexplicitly, talks about the male gaze: “Up to 81% of music videos contain sexual imagery, the majority of which sexually objectifies women by presenting them in revealing clothing, as decorative sexual objects, dancing sexually, or in ways that emphasize body parts or sexual readiness.” The article talks about how women are sexually presented in the media which is what the male gaze encompasses the “male gaze” is a harmful contribution to the sexualization of girls and is also seen throughout the music video. The beginning of the music video shows 50 Cent walking into a brothel-type mansion where the camera pans to focusing on the writhing, half-naked women in the foyer of the mansion. This scene is viewed from a male’s perspective because the camera focuses on their sensual movements and physical assets instead of their normal facial expressions or more appropriate places on their body. Also, since 50 Cent is the only male in the mansion, the camera is only coming from a male perspective because brothels are only truly for a male’s pleasure. The other women in the video are objectified from their revealing clothing

Khalid Tokhi Professor Kenneth Lindleaf Sociology A180 22 October 2015 Gender Roles Present in “A Girl in a Country Song” by Maddie and Tae Strong, manly men doing hard labor, whistling at pretty southern belles in short jean shorts and cowgirl boots. That is the basis of most of the music videos and songs in the country world. Country music is seen by Maddie and Tae as injurious to women as it depicts them as obedient and submissive to men’s wishes. The complexity of gender and sexual roles are blurred by country music in order to replicate a social system in which women are expected to live up to expectations that

Cultural Re-appropriation and political correctness in today’s music industry have been a big problem which has degraded its culture and origins. For this matter, I have chosen to cover the topic of Taylor’s swifts use of re-appropriation, abuse of the term feminism, and how political correctness determines the perception of the music video by comparing her and Nicki Minaj’s Anaconda for my written task 2 choice. The reason as to why this topic is chosen is due to the fact that a lot of caucasian female pop stars like Taylor swift herself nowadays such as Iggy Azalea is constantly able to get away with the use of stolen identity by culturally re-appropriating dance moves. She westernises dances including twerking as well as abuses feminism’s