In my opinion, i think this fight is focused on the wrong group of people. While men do play a major role in the exploitation of these women, I do not think it is entirely their fault. It is their fault that they have the most disrespectful lyrics and that needs to change, but it is not their fault that there are these women that choose to disrespect themselves. In these videos, there are no men holding a gun to these women saying they must dance around half-naked or degrade themselves, they choose to. We never really know the woman's situation, she might need the money or have low self-esteem or maybe she just does not care, all of those reasons are the real major problems, not the men.
I think in order to fight back against this degrading pop culture is to start with these women. If the women would stop performing in these videos I think there would be a chain reaction that would show up in the music. These rappers would have to change their lyrics to fit the video, unless they wanted to write a song about big booty women, but have a music video full of men doing nothing. If we uplift and empower these Black women, which will be hard because they are already grown, it may slow down and eventually end the production of this degrading music.
I agree strongly! If women were to stop putting themselves in those postions where they are looked at as a piece of meat and stand up for themselves, male rappers would look elsewhere for 'props' to put in their videos. I love women! I undersatnd why they dance and degrade themselves. Some have childern they need to feed. Some need money to go to school. Whatever the case may be, it still saddens me that some women will choose that type of job, over another.
ReplyDelete-Maeghan Leonard
This is very true. It all falls down to not playing the blame game and we as people, not just men or women, making a change together.
ReplyDelete-Keiwana Glover
I agree, it is not right to slowly place the blame on the men, the women in these videos are to blame. As you statedwe may not know why these womenn choose to degrade themselves it could be a contemplation of alot of stuff, Living conditions when they were younger, a way of means for getting money, or they could not care. But, the question is how do we make them care? I am sure that many women have younger children, maybe we should ask them how it would look if their children were the ones they had to watch half-naked on a screen while the men called them every degrading name in the book, and showcased their assets as if they were auctioning of a cow. or we as young women could stand against such videos, they only question is are we ready to?
ReplyDelete-Jacquelyn Patterson
I agree with this article completely. I feel as though women are being degraded by these songs that we may hear on the radio, television, or in the club, but as we all know we are still the ones dancing to it. To protest something you have to be very proactive you can not let anything get by. You have to stop listening and dancing to the music that you feel is degrading. Even though I know video girls make livings of being in videos, does that really give them a good look? If we would stop as a whole there would be nobody in music videos, which means there would be no single, if there was no single you probably would not hear it on the radio. As far as the club goes women could boycott it saying that they do not want to hear that kind of music, which would work because no guy would want to go into a club filled with other guys. If we want something done we need to be active, because one little thing is not going to work.
ReplyDelete-Jennifer Warren
Wow, i love this topic because people do blame the video "models" for this exploitation. These women aren't the stylist, choreographer, or the rapper and like you said they do it to fit theiur situation. You can't blame the women, blame the rapper for actually writing the lyrics that makes black women look like whores. As long as they make that kind of music, that exploitation will still be in motion.
ReplyDeletei also agree, too much attention is focused on what the rappers are doing wrong. Not to say the rappers are wrong because they very much are so. But the women take part in this to, they try out for these videos and allow themselves to be degraded. And that is a serious problem, they are not helping the portrayal of Black Women in the Music Industry today - simply making it worse. But i also feel like it is a 2 way road. We can't simply ask the women to stop being in these videos and hope the rappers will see the wrong of there ways. BOTH of them need to change. if that can happen i think we will see some definte change.
ReplyDeleteI agree with everything thst you're saying in your article. I wouldn't want portray myself to act like that. Yes, some of them do it because they don't care or this is there only option for income but other girls who are in the videos are college educated women who just need to pay their college debt. I don't think we should judge them because they're in a video but get to know their backgorund first.
ReplyDelete-Manisha Gilliam
I enjoyed reading the stance you took on the text at hand, and I concur. I believe that we could indeed start to better the situation in regards to music if we start with these women in the videos as a starting point. The actual journey will be helping women to emotionally, physically, and mentally respect themselves. If we can get them to do that through whatever means possible, we will progress and reach the finishline.
ReplyDelete-Ashley Sims
I completely agree. It has to start with us, in order to break this cycle. The way these women allow rappers to portray them in videos is insane. The world already has a negative outlook on Black women, why worsen it?
ReplyDelete-Crystal Harrison
As Black women, they place us into one bin. It only takes one bad apple to affect and spoil the bunch. Unfortunately, when certain cultures see these videos, they think all black women are like that and that is not okay. I hope that we can figure out a way to uplift women and educate them to not make the choice to become a "video hoe."
ReplyDeleteBritney-Myshante Howard