Article Review #3 Aidan Munn

Aidan Munn

WGST 202

T/Th 9:30-10:45

Professor Currans

Blog Topic: Women and Hip-Hop

Article Review #3

Hunter, Margaret; Soto, Kathleen (2009). “Women of Color in Hip Hop: The Pornographic Gaze.” 170-191.

In “Women of Color in Hip Hop: The Pornographic Gaze”, Hunter and Soto discuss how the representation of women have spiraled downward in mainstream rap music (170).  Over time, women have started wearing less clothing and doing more sexual acts in music videos. Rap music has had a trend toward pornography since the beginning, but it’s relationship has only expanded in recent years. The main point of this article is how rap music has a pornographic trend. This means that it is very sexualized in both the lyrics and the videos.

            One way the pornographic trend of rap is shown is by the lyrics. Some research has even shown that adolescents who listen to rap are at increased risk for violence, substance abuse, and risky sexual behavior (172). Not only are rap lyrics sexual, they have specific gender roles that accompany that. Many young women do not have a problem with these lyrics because they think the girls being talked about in the songs are “bad girls” while they see themselves as good girls (172). This pornographic content in rap lyrics has happened a lot more recently. Rap music has moved away from political lyrics and now focuses more on strip clubs and sex workers (173).

            Another way the pornography influences rap music is in the music videos. Some videos show a “pornographic gender relation” which includes scenes with women being sexually humiliated, used for male sexual pleasure, and exchanging money for sex (172). If you were to turn on BET or MTV you could almost be guaranteed to see a rap music video, each one more objectifying than the next (174). Seeing these half naked women in videos make them appear to the viewers to be available for sex to men and also implies a lesser worth (174).  This is because the music videos today change the whole listening experience. This is partly because women of color’s bodies are increasingly used to sell all kinds products, including popularity of a music video (174).

            This article relates a lot to my blog topic and what I have been posting about on my blog already. In one blog post, I posted a rap music video and discussed both the lyrics of it and the way the women are portrayed in the music video. This relates a lot to this article because this article discusses the pornographic nature of the lyrics and videos. In my blog post, I discuss the pornographic nature of a specific video, “Do My Dance” by Tyga. This article also relates to course themes. One course theme this article really addresses is gender discrimination. This article discusses how rap lyrics are sexist. The lyrics convey a particular gender ideology about women and also use offensive language towards women. Women are referenced and thought about a lot differently than men are. This article also relates to my previous article, “Hip-Hop Women Shredding the Veil: Race and Class in Popular Feminists Identity”. In that article, Morgan talked about women trying to break the stereotypes they have in hip-hop industry. Women is this article challenge the men and they way they are disrespected by them. This relates to the current article because it also talks about and gives examples of women empowerment. This article tells us how Queen Latifah even went as far as to make a song, “U.N.I.T.Y.” which was a response to the lyrics being made about women in rap music. The articles are also different. The previous article focuses mostly on how women are treated whereas this article talks more about how they are represented.  In the previous article,  it discusses how women are treated very differently form men based off of no fact other than that they are women. This article doesn’t focus much on how they are treated, but more on how they are seen. It focuses on how women are seen as sexual objects and the previous article focuses on how they are treated as sexual objects. The article definitely increased my knowledge about women and hip-hop, specifically the lyrics and music videos. The article taught me that regardless of the intent of the lyrics or videos, they can still be damaging to women and influence the way guys who listen or see them treat women. This article really opened my eyes to the fact that if you are being shown off as simply a sex object, people might mistake that for all you are good for. I think the author did a very good job describing this and did not leave anything unaddressed.