Gender Stereotypes In Contemporary Popular Music

The Hip Hop music industry is infamous for being controversial. In the article Hip Hop’s Betrayal of Black Women there’s a debate on whether the exploitation and constant verbal slander of women should be acceptable just because it sales records. It presents the question that why is it that male poverty breeds sexism? Even though women may have lived in the same environment males still see women as the enemy in their music in an effort to sell records.

In Joan Morgan’s “From Fly-Girls to Bitches and Hos,” her feminist point of view addresses the problem of degradation and sexism in rap and hip-hop music. Through this passage, Morgan looks at the deeper meaning and connects rap and hip-hop music with the African American community. Between the beats, the lyrics of this specific genre of music show listeners various situations the African American community deals with, like crime, drugs, alcohol, relationships, and their day-to-day life in America. With Morgan’s feminist criticism, she states that the blame is not only on rap and hip-hop artists, but also other women because they should be speaking out against being called “bitches” and “hos”. Through the rhetorical strategies of description,

Songs have been portraying society as far back in history as we can research. A song that exemplifies society in a positive way is the song “Straight Outta Vagina” by Pussy Riot on the album XXX. This song portrays women as strong and independent, it also outlines some of the amazing things women have done throughout history. This is shown though the imagery of women portrayed as vaginas. Throughout the song, there are many examples of how Pussy Riot defies gender stereotypes, fights gender norms, exemplifies gender performance, power, and violence.

Throughout history men and women have played different roles in music. Today is no different. With the development of the music video, these different roles were magnified. From rap to country, men and women play roles. DreamWorlds 3: Sex, Desire, and Power in Music Video explores the world of music video. Women are seen as sex symbols that simply must have sex and will submit to any fantasy that a man may have. This is mostly displayed in rap music. DreamWorlds 3 also talks about the language used. Again, it is mostly displayed in rap, and the language is very vulgar. Country music is different. According to research by Julie Andsager

Women have decided to consume hip hop regardless of the sexism and machismo of their rap artist spouses. Historically, black women who have sex with other women haven’t been recognized in the Black community. Also, the expectations are the same in hip hop culture because men reject lesbians. An example is the murder in 2003 of Sakia Gunn after she declared her lesbian identity to a group of males. We all know that in hip hop culture men predominate and precisely masculine. Women can achieve a higher professional success than men regarding no matter their sexual orientation. In other hand, women represent different controlling images like the whore, the mammy and temptress. Homophobia in hip hop is translated into forms of oppression, discrimination and violence for gays, lesbians and transgender. “Black women rappers interpret and articulate the fears, pleasures, and promises of young black women whose voices have been relegated to the margins of public discourse.” Their voices are in constant dialogue with the public and men rappers about sexual promiscuity, emotional commitment, infidelity, the drug trade, racial politics and black cultural history. If we pay close attention to female rappers, we will notice that they address questions of sexual power, economic opportunities and the pain of racism and sexism. Women rappers has been promoted as sexually progressive, antisexist voices because of “an understanding of male rappers as uniformly sexist.” Discussions of women

When people think of popular music they think of party beats created for pure entertainment and nothing more. People do not see this genre of music as capable of anything else. The stigma of popular music only being a form of amusement for the mass consumer is challenged when artists use music to attract attention to social issues. This paper intends to show how music like Raï challenge the thought that popular music is only for entertainment.

The essay, “From Fly-Girls to Bitches and Hos,” discusses the pervasive misogyny found in hip-hop lyrics.The author, Joan Morgan, argues that by comprehending what is occurring in the hip-hop culture to generate

Charlotte Bunch once said “Sexual, racial, gender, violence, and other forms of discrimination and violence in a culture cannot be eliminated without changing culture.” Our society experiences all of these problems and I would like to focus on the gender perspective in the 21st century and how women have had more of an influence in music than people actually realize. Men have dominated the music industry and business but women have been the underlying reason as for why men and other females have been so successful in the music scene.

It is suggested that one of the reasons why artists use misogynistic lyrics in their music is that they have internalized the negative stereotypes about women that are prevalent in American society. African women were historically portrayed as animalistic sexual beasts and African males in a submissive role, giving in to wild instinct or bodily impulses. The internalization of such stereotypes may be a possible explanation of the hyper sexuality within certain hip hop music. Various authors have argued that misogyny is merely an outgrowth of the cultural acceptance of misogyny at large.

An issue many have with Hip Hop music is it over-sexualisation of black women. Within hip hop music videos and the lyrics used to define women, are often portrayed in ways that calls for them to sexually satisfy men. Hunter and Soto (2009), highlighted that women in hip hop music are often characterised as sex workers. Their study coincides with Miller-young (2008), who argued Hip-Hop music has an obsession with portraying women as strippers in their song. She pointed out that Hip-Hop music is extremely misogynistic with males being shown as pimps whilst females are shown involved in sexual acts. This shows that within Hip-Hop music males are shown to be the dominating sex. This can impact on women negatively due to the fact hip-hop has become

Nowadays, certain style of music are becoming more involve in our society than others. For instance, the R&B and Rap/hip pop are now getting the top on the Medias. We will try to explore those music’s gender. We will try to understand why and how they are what they are now?

From the lens of feminist theory rap music portray women to be lustful. Rap music suppose to be a positive influence on injustices and social issues, but the strong content, language forces self-objectifying and self-exploitation (Herd; 2015). This music genre also up spring off capitalism and patriarchy which is mediated through racism. Elitism tradition of African American which is also known as “Playing the dozens” (Herd; 2015). Hip-Hop music genre has affected young adults in American society. In Neena Speer’s study hip-hop contains violence and misogyny which are offensive musical lyrics. In this context women and men are controlled by a negative image of themselves. The significance of this this focus on how many of the themes that are included in the song most young black adults claims to be apart of who they are (Speer;2014). Greenberg, Baron-Cohen, Stillwell, Kosinski and Rentfrow show how preference of musical genre is related to cognitive. The main focus of the study was to get participants to report their reactions to different musical genres (Speer; 2014). In the article “Constructing Racial Rhetoric: Media depiction of harm in Heavy Metal and Rap Music” music genre was judged on a level that the writer picked and choose what material to put into the media. Music that was considered to be rap or heavy metal was projected out to the

The lyrics from this part of the song also relate to people who are feminists or what Conley writes as “a consciousness raising movement to get people to understand that gender is an organizing principle of life. The underlying belief that women and men should be accorded equal opportunities and respect.” However, everything in this song says that it is easier to be a boy because in a relationship it is easier for them to not care. In turn the song is demeaning the feminists in the world who want to have equal rights or opportunities. Along with those who believe you can put yourself first or make their own rules even if it's not what society deems as an actual rule to fit in. We don’t have to be under men in society, but we can’t just assume that we know everything about boys. Especially for a song that follows the societal norms of what a boy should do in a relationship. We have to see that yes boys tend to do this, but it doesn’t mean you could be any better if you were suddenly that

The 1980’s consisted of several historical events and societal changes that have been relived though the lyrics of many young hip-hop artists. Of the numerous genres of songs, hip-hop has been labeled as of the most relatable genres. During this 1980’s, many of the songs that were written by male hip-hop artist tend to focus on the relationship aspect of male and female interactions. This finding is similar to what was stated in Frith’s article (1986) that most successful pop songs were about being “happy in love” and “frustrated in love” as well as having a sex interest (p. 78). Instead of using derogatory terms to describe women, men felt the need to use more delicate and gentle terms. Through their music, artists portrayed women as individuals who provide love, support, happiness and fulfillment to a man’s life. Furthermore, male artists portrayed themselves as men who weren’t afraid to express their emotions, admit their dependency on women, and their willingness to do what it takes to keep a woman. There were no signs of hypermasculinity or dominance in the first few songs

Society has painted a picture that beautiful is the most important thing that a women can be. Smarts, a good personality, and other great traits do not matter if the women is not attractive looking. The media is most responsible for this stereotype. Women in commercials and television shows give girls a false expectation of what they are supposed to look like. The women on these programs have thousands of dollars of make up on and have done countless number of surgeries on themselves to make themselves look “attractive”. Not only does this effect the girl’s self-esteem, it also puts a false image into men’s heads about how women are supposed to look. This puts even more pressure on the women to try to achieve something that is unattainable. Not only are the women in these advertisements unrealistic looking, they are also over-sexualized. Over-sexualized means that these women are being shown as sex figures instead of being actual actors. One of the worst offenders in over-sexualizing women is music videos. Music videos almost always have scantily clad women dancing in a sexual way throughout the duration of song. This coupled with lyrics that are vulgarly demeaning towards women give ladies a false idea of what they have to be in order for a man to like them.