In the year of 2014, we saw many famous women revealing their assets in the media to prove a point, that is, to show that they are sexually liberated. Although, it may have seem they were using their bodies to make sales - it is not all true. The recent chaos in the media with the female booty and female sexuality in pop culture as a whole has provided the world with powerful messages. So imagine, as these celebrities take on a huge influence on the media with their bodies, what kind of message are they trying to get across? Why are these women showing their bodies to prove that they are sexually liberated? Anaconda music video by Nicki Minaj does exactly that, displays females bodies explicitly erogenous, but the message is clear if you …show more content…
In the video, Minaj strikingly shakes her own booty, wiggling it both under her own control and on its own from its girth. There are also those bikini women shaking their own things, both in the jungle and against a blank white background on chairs, making it more vividly clear. Minaj goes on to show her hourglass figure in another scene of the video, she appears to be working out and only in a thong, bra and sneakers. The video then shows Minaj in a kitchen where she peels a banana, looks at it admiringly and then tosses it away. What is the message here? Males, it represents a male’s genitals. Remember, there is absolutely no male presence. Even with booty everywhere, it 's all done under a lack of male gaze. The audience is simply watching a group of beautiful women with impressive butts and flawless twerks around a man-less tropical island. Nicki 's gives her "I do what I want, when I want, how I want" brand of feminism. Towards the end of the video however, there is a man, rapper/singer, Drake. Minaj shakes her booty in his face, as he is about to touch her butt, she swaps it away. Minaj explicitly shows that unless you have her direct permission, one better not be touching. And then she 'll strut away leaving you all alone to contemplate your extreme irrelevancy to the entire endeavor- she has that power. Minaj is owning to to her sexuality. She can do that; she denies her sexuality to drake. The lyrics of the song emphasizes such, they generates an
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
To begin with, the media industry has the power to decide what reaches the public’s eye; therefore, they present to the public their versions of what “beautiful’ women should appear like. The media has created their version of what the “ideal body” should be. They continuously show the audience photographic images of models that appear extremely thin. Media meticulously chooses women with bodies which media calls “sexy”. Spectators rarely get a glance of women who are overweight. For example, all of the actress that make an appearance on television shows are below what is considered a healthy weight. Yet, this concept is what media has defined as beautiful, influencing many women to obtain a thin figure. As a result, of these messages sent by
In the recent history, feminism and pop culture have become more closely entwined than ever before. This can be partially because of the growing interest in culture studies as an academic discipline, but it can also be explained by the fact that, there’s a whole lot more popular culture to watch. Pop culture has become our common language, a universal way of uniting the world. Pop culture is also a key route to making the concept of feminism both resonant and relatable. In this paper, I am interested in the relationship and connections between pop culture’s representations of women and girls and the depiction of feminism through the lens of pop culture. There’s a
The 1980s started out like every other decade. There were new trends, music, and culture. But there was something about the 80s that set it apart from any other decade. It was the way its culture weaved it’s way into people’s hearts, and minds. The 80s soon became symbolic in many ways. It showed that women could go into the workforce and get high educations, technology was about to revolutionize the world, and the culture was even bigger and better than before. Pop Culture in the 1980s can be summed up as trend setting and iconic because many things that were relevant during the decade are still around and or cherished today by many people. So let’s take a trip down memory lane and go back to a time to the 1980s.
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.
How we view gender images today come from many different factors. They comes from family beliefs, cultural norms, society, and last media. Although women have made great progress for acceptance, equality, and respect. I wonder with the process made, if women are being portrayed more positivity or are they portrayed still negativity. Music is taking a big role in how construct images of gender in todays society. In popular music like pop and rap, are sending information, messages, and content to listener that shape their view on an aspect on things. Women in song are still being portrayed negatively by male artist. Many pop and rap songs are about men having control over women, women being seen
The video Dreamworlds 3 is showing the audience how females are portrayed in music videos. Most times when women are presented in these videos, the focus is on their bodies. This picture shows the audience that the definition of female is sexuality. Women in the video were often wearing less clothes, dancing and playing with their own body to reach for attention. I agree with many of the claims about how women often are portrayed in this way. I regularly see this when watching music videos. No matter if the music video is devoted for a female or male singer, the video happens to have a specific pattern of how to picture women. When watching videos
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
Pop Culture permeates our society and is now the first and last thing we think about every day. Almost every waking moment includes pop culture in some way, as society has embraced this new way of life. Parents use electronics to entertain their children and keep them out of the way, and children use them to avoid their parents. Escapism, guilty pleasures and popular culture define each other in ways that they didn’t in the past and now our world is trying to reconcile it.
American media is a powerful shaping force in developing values and behavior. “As an institution, the media wields the power to form, reinforce and dismantle gender ideologies” (Stillman 51) which have long lasting and negative results. Both magazines and television reflect behaviors, such as gossip and sexual behaviors, already present within American culture (Stillman 52, MacKay and Covell 573), but the media also creates new patterns of behavior that are then flooded into popular culture. Some of the most common matters that the media creates and then floods into American culture are: fashion trends, new phrases and other consumer oriented products. Because media within the United States is so readily available to the people, it is nearly
Since its publication in 1954, J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy The Lord of the Rings has embedded itself in popular culture. From influencing other fantasy works to being referred to in television, there is no doubt that The Lord of the Rings is here to stay. The Lord of the Rings is one of the best-known book series of all time, which is reflected by the impact it has had on pop culture. Among the areas of popular culture that had influence from The Lord of the Rings is music. Many different rock bands such as Rush and Led Zeppelin used themes and allusions from The Lord of the Rings in their songs. However, it was not only rock music that was influenced by Tolkien’s work. Folk music and even rap music today include associations to the trilogy. By discussing Led Zeppelin’s song “The Battle of Evermore”, Sally Oldfield’s series of songs entitled “Songs of the Quendi”, and Vision’s “5 AM in Toronto (Freestyle), this paper will show the ways in which The Lord of the Rings has influenced music across generations and genres, as well as its larger pop culture influence throughout the years using music as a jumping-off point.
“teaches us about aspects of our own society” (Zeisler, 1-22). She describes how politics and
In only the spam of 24hours, 19.6 million people around the country watched the music video to her single ‘Anaconda’, while generating debates of sexuality and empowerment. It shouldn’t come as a surprise when Nicki is seen parading her body around in a music video, the way in which celebrities are still relevant is through the ability to produce revenue and have people talking. Nicki doesn’t shy away from criticism and stereotypes, in the very first shot of the video she appears from the jungle, calling on the idea of how society places judgement and ideals of a black women being of an “exotic and animalistic” beast. Her body alone is a statement within itself, not only is she reclaiming the idealistic images of a curvy women but she is also reclaiming it to fit the realism of how females come in different shapes and sizes.
The pornographic industry has not lost their viewers, and the constant leaks of female celebrity personal pictures demonstrate that society has always sexualized women’s body for their pleasure. McRobbie states that there is a modern movement where women are free to choose for themselves. Females are choosing to go topless to prove breasts are merely body parts. Celebrities such as Bella Hadid and Rihanna walk the streets with see-through tops, making the appearance of their breasts nothing but a fashion statement. Many allegations are made saying self-exposing breasts comes from a lack of self-respect. The question arises, is it only acceptable for women to be topless for the pleasure of others? Not in the current pop culture world. Women are free to make their decisions, and they have decided their breasts are not to be sexualized. If a woman’s breast is out, she is doing it out of choice and for her