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Women's Music Essay

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For nearly thirty years, popular culture has been an ever transforming mosaic of human flesh, or more specifically female flesh. While it has been known for decades that ”sex sells”, this statement has taken on bizarre, and at times offensive aspects. It seems that the more modern we become, the more sexually explicit and objectifying media content becomes. This fact remains true across multitudes of media formats; today everything from vacuum cleaners to toothpaste is madly exciting by sex appeal. Ask any senior citizen about the content of television in past generations and you will likely hear them describe modern programs as inappropriate, even vulgar. Perhaps the perversion of sexuality and the objectification of women in the media …show more content…

The first Mariah Carey Video I chose was You’ll Always be My Baby. I chose this video for two reasons. First and foremost, it was one of Ms. Carey’s first hit singles and second, it deals (as do most pop songs) with love. I thought that by choosing a song about love I might get to see some of the more explicit video segments that the early 1990’s had to offer. My hypothesis was far from supported as this video showed relatively few stereotypes, and the sexual objectification of the female main character (Mariah herself) was non existent. The video details a childhood romance that faded, but the fact that first loves always hold a special place in one’s heart. While both Mariah and the adolescent girl she is played by are dressed relatively conservatively and are, for the most part, not sexually objectified, certain stereotypes persist. For one the video only shows Mariah in settings of leisure activities, she is rocking back and forth on a tire swing or is shown reminiscing about her lover to her diary over candle light. Even the young Mariah is shown in this way, doodling in a notebook as her adolescent boyfriend serenades her from outside the window. The boy on the other hand is shown briefly playing sports and then studying (before sneaking out his window to serenade Mariah).

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