Black Women In Hip Hop Music

Hip Hop is a musical and cultural genre that has become prominent over the last three decades. It was a way of allowing individuals to express themselves through music, dance, and dress to assist in finding their own identity. Hip Hop has more recently gathered a negative image on how women are portrayed in the industry. Hip Hop music videos in particular are said to objectify women, specifically black women in a hypersexual manner. This portrayal of the black women has arguably had an effect on the younger generation of black females in America by giving the notional that they are lustful and primitive. This paper will first discussion the history and origin of hip hop music which will lead into hip hop today. After learning a brief history,
It is a way for them to express emotions, relax and “chill”, and learn about the social world through the eyes of another. However, not all hip hop music is positive. How does lyrics from a song effect youth, specifically black female listeners? Upon an examination of popular hip hop songs, six major themes were present; men and power, sex as a top priority for males, objectification of women, sexual violence, women defined by a man, and women not valuing themselves. (Bretthauer, Zimmerman, and Banning, 2007) Studies have explored music’s effects on behavior. One such study considered the effects of exposure to sexualized lyrics (Carpentier, Knobloch-Westerwick, & Blumhoff, 2007). After this exposure to overtly sexualized pop lyrics, the participants rated potential romantic partners with a stronger emphasis on sexual appeal in comparison to the ratings of those participants who heard nonsexual pop
It will now be discussed how the sexualization of females in music videos can portray the wrong image of maturity and empowerment to young females. Women’s bodies sell. This is a well-known fact; from tabloids of bikini bodies to gyms with yoga pants wearing trainers in sports bras, the female form is top seller. No industry knows this better than the music industry. Recently Jennifer Lopez and Iggy Azalea teamed up on a music video focusing on what exactly…, women’s butts. Nikki Minaj’s video for her song Anaconda shows well-endowed women gyrating to the lyrics “don’t want none unless you got buns Hun”. Videos such as these put a feministic mask of empowerment on, but what are they truly selling? These female artists are selling that women are not worth anything more than to be accessories or viewed as sexual objects for men. What is this doing to our girls? The evidence tells us that exposure to these images increases anxiety and shame in adolescent and adult girls and women. The objectification theory states that in a society where women are frequently objectified and seen as objects rather than as women, they begin to self-objectify. They see themselves as objects for other’s viewing pleasures. This leads to women internalizing an outsider’s perspective of their body and what they should be doing with it.