Molly Cyrus Analysis

Music containing sexually explicit content makes people in today’s world more calloused and more accepting of sexually activity. How do lyrics play a role in all of this? Lyrics play a huge role in enabling our society to normalize sex in everyday conversation. Songs with sexually explicit lyrics reinforce the idea that premarital sex is okay among younger generations. Studies show that premarital sex is more accepted by adolescents if they listen to explicit music compared those that do not listen to explicit music (Zhang, 2008).

“There 's something missing in the music industry today... and it 's music. Songs you hear don 't last, it 's just product fed to you by the industry.” – Jimmy Buffet. These words by Buffet highlight the drastic changes in music culture over the years. The mainstream music today is brief. Modern songs are composed to be hits at the moment and forgotten later, which results in ephemeral products that stay in the annals of music history. The popular genres’ quality steadily deteriorates. Originally, music was melodic, less strident, personal, and concocted by people who really loved and were passionate towards it. They resound and have musical offspring, unlike today’s superficial and meaningless music. Certainly, there are modern artists with good track records who enjoy talent and fame for their repercussion in society. However, it is clear how the worldliness that now typifies the pop culture, interferes with art. This is due to the audience’s acceptance of music containing lyrics that encourages all kinds of indecorous behavior. Although, Beyoncé is known for being the third most honored women in Grammy Award history and a global symbol of female empowerment, her song “Partition” should be avoided because it lacks emotion, encourages teen pregnancy, and has lyrics crowded with unintelligible pop-culture references.

Summer hit “Blurred Lines” is one of the radio’s most played songs currently. The song is placed at number one on America’s top 40 charts for the week of September 14th. While it is popular, the lyrics paint a story of someone who wants the singer, but is a good girl. The message of the song is blurring lines of morality. Not only is the song soliciting sexual themes, but it goes as far as using derogatory names towards the said good girl. Also, the song has strong themes of guilting someone into sex, claiming that not many can refuse T.I.’s pimping. The song

Shallow lyrics that fail to evoke much thought can be detrimental to a listener's intellectual health. Many developed countries have seen declines in reading proficiency and the superficial

Then, I will present the results in graphs and tables and discuss them. I plan to split my discussion into two parts parallel to the survey’s parts. I predict that the participants would describe the women in the infantilized song lyrics and music videos as childlike and dependent. If my prediction was true, I would use the discussion parts to explain the powerfulness of music in shaping the perception of women in our society. In my discussion, I will incorporate the findings of Huot’s and Carlson’s research that go along with my predicted finding. I will also use the examples of the infantilization of women in pop culture that are shown in “The Codes of Gender;” a documentary film, written and directed by Sut Jhally, that focuses on the American’s pop culture role in shaping the stereotypical ideas about femininity and masculinity. Also in this section, I will discuss other effects that resulted from the infantilization of women in music. I will use Alanna Vagianos’s Huffington post article “Drake’s ‘Hotline Bling’ Just Got A Genius Feminist Makeover,” to help me provide an example. In this article, Vagianos presents the story of a 27-year-old woman named Javetta Laster who was affected by the infantilizing lyrics of the hit song “Hotline Bling,” and decided to rewrite the lyrics in a more accurate way. One example of Laster’s rewritten lyrics shows how the original one was presenting an infantilized look of women; the original lyric says: “Why you never alone? Why you always touching road? Used to stay at home, be a good girl. You was in the zone, yeah,” while Laster’s edited feminist version of the same lyric says: “You used to stay at home and be someone I saw fitting into the patriarchal expectations of women to be infantilized good ‘girls’ which is some bizarre father/daughter husband/wife dynamic left over from women being considered adult children & property.” Laster’s rewritten

Charlotte Church speaks out about this issue saying “The culture of demeaning women in pop music is so ingrained as to become routine, from the way we are dealt with by management and labels, to the way we are presented the public” (Chase par. 9). This leads to questions, for example, must women be sexualized to gain greater earnings? Does sex truly sell? When we examine artists such as Julia Hotter, HAIM, or Polica, we perceive them as strong artists who are unrestricted in their art by their gender or sexuality. However, when comparing their success, sexualized women have dominated the music industry. Chase explains that women are allowed to fill three main roles in modern pop music: One of the Girls’ Girls, the Victim/ Torch Singer, and Unattainable Sexbot. Artists such as Beyoncé would be considered “One of the Girls’ Girls” who are for women power and are considered empowering. Adele is considered a “Victim/Torch Singer” even though she does not use sexuality to sell records, lyrically, she perceives the wronged women and creates a state of despair. An “Unattainable Sexbot” would be, without a doubt, Miley Cyrus, whose main goal is to be the most successful in the music industry by being hyper-sexualized and unrealistic. If an artist does not fit into one of these categories, they generally have a much harder time being one of the most successful in the music

This song displays the traditional messages sent by male artists. What about female artists? What do their songs portray? Andsager and Roe’s findings give a good description. According to them, there are two kinds of female artists. The strong, more established female artists portray women as “fully equal.” These women are in their thirties at least, they are more established, and they dress in casual suits. They sang romance, female emancipation, and heartbreak like the rest, but they did not compromise their image in their videos. They use Trisha Yearwood as an example in her song Everybody Knows. The other type, were women who “fell into the lowest level on the consciousness scale.” They used Deana Carter’s song We Danced Anyway as an example. In this song she rolled on the beach in a wet t-shirt. Another one is Faith Hill’s song Breathe. In this song, Hill is seen rolling around in her bed sheets with no clothes on.

“He don't smack that ass and pull your hair like that” is a rather vulgar and demeaning statement, yet it is freely sung in Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke, a song that was in the top ten on the Billboard list of the most popular R&B/Hip-Hop songs in 2013. Because hip-hop is a very large part of the African American culture, and many speakers of African American English (AAE) are portrayed through these songs, women are often highly influenced by the objectification of their bodies in hip-hop songs. Since the emergence of the hip-hop genre in popular culture in the 1960s and 70s, women’s bodies have been sexually objectified through this music. Although the impact of the sexualization of women’s bodies in hip-hop songs is still very

Musicians may feel that the only way to increase sales is to make their lyrics as graphic as possible. It seems as though the lyrics to songs are giving permission to listeners to do wrong and immoral things (Tanner). As stated in the article “How Much Are Violent Lyrics to Blame?” by Emily Tanner, “Music is important in today’s society and when music becomes corrupt in its meaning then society may in turn become corrupt and immoral.”

Many applauded, many were disgusted, and many slut-shamed. James E. Miller, the editor-in-chief of the Mises Institute in Canada, published an article titled “Why Slut-Shame” days after Miley’s performance. He advocates that “slut-shaming is a welcome course of action - even more so in an era where young women wear their craving for erotic climax as a badge of honor.” He critiques Miley’s performance and merely excuses Robin’s equal participation by saying he was “play(ing) along with the whole filthy escapade”. The sexual double standard of Robin Thicke’s actions and Miley Cyrus’ actions is one example of what our culture is built on. Another outcome of our culture is the “dating app” called Tinder. In Jenny Kutner’s article “A Woman Was Slut-Shamed,” a 23 year old woman, Olivia Melville, put in her bio Drake’s lyric “Type of girl that will suck you dry and then eat some lunch with you.” Unbeknownst to her someone screenshotted her profile and posted it to Facebook where a flood of comments came calling her a slut. One commenter took it to the extreme and said “You know the best thing about a feminist (is that) they don’t get any action so when you rape them it feels 100 times tighter.” This song, specifically this lyric, is popular for men to sing but when a woman sings the line, she is a slut and is threatened with rape; an alarming

Although it might seem like it, not all songs are about relationships and exploiting women. The band Sugarland has some of my all-time favorite songs. Sugarland’s songs are about making your own decisions, taking life as it comes, not letting others tell you what to do and to believe in yourself. In class we focused on sexually exploiting women in music videos and lyrics. I do not think that we talked enough about all of the feminist artists and the messages they are portraying.

songs say, negative things about women, they will still listen to them and support the artist.

Molly redden explains why black women are facing death when breast cancer take control showing an increase of mortality in them rather than in white women. Redden mentions in the 2012, there were forty-two percent of black women will die having this disease. According to American Cancer Society, the researcher discuss death rate toll is expected to increase to a colossal amount. In other words, Redden believes that the American Cancer Society said to be that these black women are likely to be in danger as disconsolate, for that reason, they will hit harder than other races. The author finds significantly number of high risk factor, which contributed towards black women. As a result, this deadly disease of cancer becoming an issue for black

It has been two years since the performance at the VMA’s and people are still talking about it. This is exactly what Miley wants and is striving for. According to Jib Fowles, “The desire to exhibit ourselves in such a way as to make others look at us is a primitive, insuppressible instinct” (Fowles 89). Miley is expressing her need for attention in an extreme way and it is working. By doing crazy and absurd things, she has gotten a lot of attention and people to talk about her and keep her name in headlines globally. Despite the criticism that she was receiving, her song, “Wrecking Ball,” became her first to be at the top of charts in 2014 (Biography.com Editors). A vast number of people still continue listen to the pop artist and fuel her success and desire for attention. She has succeeded in being successful by being deemed as number seventeen on Forbes Magazine’s 2014 list of the highest paid celebrities (Forbes.com). Her “fans” say bad things about her and judge her for her actions, but they still support her by purchasing and listening to her music. People everywhere cannot help but become so fascinated in what she is doing, despite whether they agree with her or not. Her ways are entertaining and interesting because they are bizarre, which society loves. Miley Cyrus has a large number of people that talk about her in negative ways, but this does not stop her from doing what she loves, which adds to her fame and success.

Other factors would include, her job loss and inability to maintain gainful employment, dependency on her parents, and lack of confidence.