Why Should the Music Video ‘Like a Boy’ Offer Such Contradictory Gender Representations?

Robin Thicke’s music video to his song “Blurred Lines” avidly contributes to the patriarchy, while portraying sexism, gender standards, and beauty standards. His music video can be analyzed from a feminist theory approach, as it’s evident that his song and video contribute to a patriarchal society and its inherently sexist and sexualized ideologies. The ideology behind the song and music video is purely sexual and about male dominance. The lyrics to the song and actions in the video exhibit extreme over sexualization and objectification of the women. Analyzing this piece of popular culture through a feminist approach opens up a provoking conversation about how popular culture functions in a patriarchal culture. Analyzing pop culture though a feminist theory can allow for a larger variety and more in-depth analysis about the social aspects and political agenda within popular culture.

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

This proves that half the demographics do not see the importance of sexual attraction or making themselves centre of attention while with the opposite sex. The girls that I surveyed were older teenagers between the ages of seventeen and eighteen, and these people were all for Lily Allen’s campaign for slamming the sexualised music videos. This shows that the older girls realise, the ideology of being ‘perfect’ does not exist, and these women shown in these videos are not ‘realistic”.

The documentaries Dream World 3 and Killing Us Softly 4 examine the exploitation of women within the media. The media, such as advertisement and the music video industry, relies heavily on the seductive image of female sexuality. Evident in not only every genre of music, but also every form of advertisement, the videos and advertisements expose and, subsequently sexualize the female body. Such sexualization inevitable leads to

Magazines, Internet, radio, music videos, music lyrics, and other types of mainstream media relentlessly portray sexualized images of women that not only promote narrow and unrealistic ‘standards’ of physical beauty, but seem to endorse, glorify and encourage them. We are almost back to the 1950’s, where women were seen merely as a sex object. Horrifyingly the media is now broadening their attacks and promotions of sex to teenagers and young girls. A report created by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), attest that there are many short term and long term physical, emotional and psychological effects of the premature sexualisation of teenagers and young girls.

Since the 1980’s hip-hop has been one of the most popular music genres. In chapter 4 of Feminism and Pop Culture: Seal Study (written by Andi Zeisler) talks about women in the late 1980s and early 90’s broke through in the hip-hop community, but were not commercialized to sell to the young, male, and white audience. This genre is male dominated that brag about the amount of money and women they have. In the hip-hop community women were viewed as objects and some still are today, but female hip-hop artist caused changes. The movement of female hip-hop artist has been through tough times since the late 1980s till now.

“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 idea “sex sells” is largely influential for celebrities like Beyoncé to deem it necessary to objectify their bodies for they're so called image. The repercussions of this behavior, however, are the lasting affects it will have on both female and male children and young adults of this generation. Behaving in a sexualized and objectified manner has the potential to corrupt young minds and manipulate their views on sex, body image and their role in society. Beyoncé Knowles-Carter is a powerful and influential woman in today’s generation. Her audience ranges from boys and girls

This research paper will examine the difference in how women’s sexuality is portrayed in hip-hop music videos. Are women empowered, or are they objectified when they express their sexuality? The public image of how women move, speak, sound, look, dance, talk, dress, and act is controlled by corporate networks who present these societal-norms to people through many mediums. Dominating how women are portrayed in music videos, men are introducing audiences to certain tropes and ideals women are expected to live up to. This heteronormative, White male fantasy, is unrealistic for women and creates an unhealthy obsession and expectation that females of all sizes and races are supposed to embody. In Women in Popular Music Media Empowered or Exploited? (p.9), Jamie Glantz asks “Are women represented as the subjects of their own desires, or do they seem to be preforming as the objects of someone else’s?” Men and women alike intend for women to follow these societal rules. Audiences do not realize the messages they are being fed through hip-hop music videos. The popular, male vocalized, music video for the summer hit of 2013 “Blurred Lines,” which appeared to be a lighthearted video of Robin Thicke and Pharell dancing with women wearing swimsuits. The male performers make faces at the camera and one another, while the women wear clunky shoes and nothing else. The men attempt to grind on the ladies legs, but the models just look distracted by the lamb featured in the video or a

Entertainment has become a worldwide phenomenon, but a big part of entertainment is objectifying women. Most movies, music videos, and advertisements include a woman semi dressed. Every Cosmopolitan magazine cover portrays what women should look like and what women should do when having sex. These magazines are setting bad expectations for women. Another example of women being objectified is the song “Blurred Lines,” by Robin Thicke.

The screening Pornland, produced by Gail Dines, focuses on the pornography industry and how the visuality of gender and sexuality influences gender construction and the power level between males and females. The pornography industry constructs males as dominant humans who have no capacity for love or empathy while females are portrayed as helpless and vulnerable. Moreover, the screening highlights how sexualised images from pornographic films are slowly becoming a part of popular culture, especially music videos, television shows and films. For example, the music video of the song ‘Blurred Lines’ by Robin Thicke uses a variation of softcore porn, consequently implementing pornography into normalised culture. The production of pornography is

Major forms of inequality such as race/ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, etc., have been known to make a presence in the music industry. Whether an artist chooses to address the situation in a positive or negative way, it is very clear as to which issue of inequality is being addressed. To get a better picture of how inequality in music takes place, “Born This Way by Lady Gaga, “Just a Girl by No Doubt, and Macklemore’s “Same Love” will be examined and evaluated pertaining to which form of inequality is present in each song. Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” focuses on the subordinate races/ethnicities along with the concept of nonheterosexuality, No Doubt’s “Just a Girl” focuses on how females tend to be looked down upon and negatively stereotyped,

But they ain’t women ….yet Girl’s ain’t women ….yet They are moneymakers Day rides, loud music and pride Ready to take the world and win But they ain’t women ….yet

When it comes to gender, there’s no wrong or right. Many our favorite entertainers have done wonderful jobs on gender bending. Now macho men get on TV with makeups and wearing heels in the music video, and women dances in bare feet with mouths singing “run the world”. In the modern pop culture, gender does not define us, but only we produce gender. In this paper, we are going to discuss how doing gender appears in Madonna’s music and how she influences the industry and the society.

Today, we live in a world where women are sexually objectified almost everywhere we look. Halloween used to be fun and all about candy and cute costumes when we were children, but as time goes on, adult women can feel pressured to dress up as something sexy, like a sexy bunny, a sexy doctor, or a sexy tree somehow. In the marketing world, we now see women portrayed as body parts, only having their legs shown in ads to sell the latest designer shoe or their inexplicably wet lips on a billboard to promote an upper lip wax. Even in television and in movies, women are depicted as being very sexual by their actions, dialogue, and “barely there” clothing. Because of an increase in social media, videos from YouTube are being rapidly shared between friends and amongst those videos are their favorite music videos from a popular artist. Music videos have become more and more sexually explicit and include the sexual objectification of women like the rest of our media, no matter what the genre of music is. One has to wonder whether or not this kind of exposure has an effect on men and their sexual beliefs.