Women Portrayal in the Media
CANDY SHOP- 50 CENT
This video shows how women are portrayed as sexual objects. 50 Cent is the dominant figure and the women are represented in limited clothing, while the main focus is their bodies and their promiscuous roles. 50 Cent is using sexuality to promote his song and has women wearing revealing clothing in order to attract the viewers attention. He is instilling and concentrating on the negative stereotypes surrounding women. The boundaries of the traditional gender roles are strong and obvious in this video as there is no sign of power from the women outside of the use of their bodies in a sexual manner. This video also shows that women are only attractive when they're not wearing barely any clothing.
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NELLY - Tip drill
There is a bikini-clad woman shaking her behind and grinning wildly while holding one leg high in the air in Nelly’s “Tip Drill.” While another woman, standing on her head, provides the backdrop to Ludacris rhymes, with his head between her naked, open thighs while she flexes her buttocks. There are women positioned on all fours, women writhing on the ground, women grabbing their ankles. This is not pornography, it's a video that was shown when it came out on Black Entertainment Television (BET). When analyzing this video I was extremely disgusted with the way that women are portrayed in this video, they are degraded and disrespected. This is a dangerous message to send to young girls, because if they see a video like this and they have low self-esteem and are not receiving attention from men, they may try and present themselves like some of the girls in the video at an attempt to grab attention from men, which allows men to treat women however they want and degrade them. This video is very graphic, which is why i decided to just show a picture instead. In class we talked about how the “ideal body” differs from race to race. Women of color usually have a bigger butt where as white woman have bigger breasts and are much thinner than women of color. Money is being thrown everywhere, which implies that they are prostitutes or strippers. These women are only there to please men and be under their control.
AKon - I wanna love youAlso known as “I wanna f*ck you” where the ladies in the video are “whining ‘n grinding” as the artist points out himself before openly expressing his interest in their bodies. This is another video where women are being degraded and are only being "admired" because of their body that has hardly any clothing on. This music videos depict women as property. They are presented as seductive creatures. In the music video we see that these women are doing sexy dances to AKON to attract them, which shows that a woman must be sexy and sexual in order to catch the attention of a male.
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ROBin THicke - blurred linesIn this music video we see women hardly wearing any clothes at all dancing around the male singer. This shows that the male is the dominant one and center of attention while the women in these videos are just objects placed there to enhance the importance of the male. They also have two different versions of this video, and in the other one you see all the women naked with no clothing on just standing around or dancing. When I saw the uncensored video I was extremely upset because the way women are portrayed in this video. They are all tall, skinny, pretty women, which makes women of this generation and whoever is watching it want to look like that.
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Juvenile - back that aZZ up
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From the beginning of this video we see women shacking their behinds. The lyrics say "Girl you workin' with some ass, yeah. You bad, yeah" Juvenile is directing the song to a woman that is attractive and curvy. One of the interesting things that this music video does is make the woman who is pretty with the nice small waist and big behind the main one while the other ones hate. This brings up a good point because it is telling woman two things: that if you do not look like her then you aren't considered bad and if you do look like that everyone is going to hate on you. "Girls frown when you pass, yeah. They mad, yeah" She is so beautiful that everyone else is hating, but it doesn't matter because she is the center of attention. Throughout the video we just see women shaking their behinds to a camera while men are talking about the way in which they shake it and how good they look doing it. I was really disturbed by the lyrics and the way women are depicted in this music video. The overall concept they were trying to aim for was a complete fail. |
Kanye West ft. rick ross, nicki minaj - MonsterThroughout the video we are presented with a series of lifeless, nearly naked women’s bodies. In addition to the sexualized body parts, there’s a stereotype of white women being vulnerable to men and again women are clearly used as objects and it shows the hatred of women clearly throughout. There was also a moment when a black guy had a chain saw and was cutting up a women’s body. The video makes the viewer see that the white women are mutilated and dead and the black women are evil and cannibalized.
Nicki Minaj’s performance in this video was definitely one to note. The fact that there was a monstrous Nikki and a “good” Nikki is connected to the "virgin" and slutty binary. The monstrous Nikki is considered the slutty and is wearing lingerie tights with a thong so everyone can see her butt when she is dancing. She is pretty much exposing herself while on the other hand the “good” Nikki is wearing a princess dress and is tied up showing that there is no way out. There's a double bind and how the virgin/slutty binary is an example of a lose-lose situation because being a virgin could mean that she’s a prune, so either way she loses. This affects our society because again, women are being sexualized in music videos, and these stereotypes are given to women. Black women in the media are always being sexualized and given the bad parts (shaking their butts, evil etc) while white women for the most part get the more conservative and are rarely ever in hip videos. |
Tyga - Make it nastyBefore the music video starts there is a warning that says, “Due to the sexually explicit content you must be 18 years of age in order to view video”. This immediately tells the viewer that there are going to be naked women who are sexualizing themselves. There were women kissing each other which goes against the fact that everyone is "supposed" to be heterosexual. This an example of something that goes against domestic “norms”. Again, women showing that the only way to attract men is by being slutty and basically being their toys. The pillow fighting that takes place gives off a dismissive tone because they want people to think they are just playing like at a normal slumber party. This video is strictly for the male gaze. Women are kissing each other and they're they’re naked. The usage of the word “b*tch” further emphasizes the hatred of women and how they are objectified. Instead of acknowledging them as real human beings, they are being degraded by being called a bitch.
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