In "Who(se) Am I," Imani Perry explained her observations of how sex is a commodity and women are objectified in the Hip-Hop industry. It's not just hip-hop, either; rap is also a guilty culprit - maybe even more so than hip-hop.
First of all, I was beyond relieved to read this, because these issues outrage me daily. I still would not define myself as a feminist, but what I'm discussing here is something so explicit that even a tool would have to stop and think about it.
Perry explained that this was present far before the 1990's, but it became unavoidably prevalent in this decade because of some different factors, such as pornography's transcendence into American popular culture. This included porn stars and exotic dancers becoming mainstream celebrities and lesbianism publicly becoming a heterosexual man's fantasy.
Perry noted that hip-hop and rap music videos have a very predictable pattern and form. The men are singing and rapping (and being deeply expressive) and the women are scantily clad and their sole function seems to be to sway suggestively and look sexy. They are not represented as people, but rather, as things. It is suggested that these sexy things are the property of a rich man instead of an equal partner in an honest relationship endeavor. I was a child in the 90's but even then I was appalled by similar things I saw on TV.
Perry drew two female hip-hop artists as examples. One seemed to perpetuate the problem of female objectification by displaying herself as an object, and the other sought to combat it by being herself with attitude and even "transcending gender categories" through tomboyishness. The first was Lil Kim and the second was Missy Elliot. The above photo I've included of Lil Kim is shocking but this was taken before she had plastic surgery on her breasts and face. She now has large implants, a smaller nose, and more pronounced lips. She also now sports very blond hair and blue eye contacts. It's personally disappointing for me to have seen this, because she was naturally beautiful and now she just looks fake. I'm not much of a hip-hop fan, but I still admire women like Missy Elliot, Alicia Keys, India.Arie, and Eve. I'd like to think that they are changing their industry with their music.
In "The More You Subtract, The More You Add," Jean Kilbourne plays a broken record in discussing the "weightism" which fashion trends have wrought upon our society and others. I've felt it. I'd like to be awesome and say that I'm impervious to it, but that would be the biggest lie I could ever tell. I began feeling self-conscious about my body in the fourth grade. I've continued to struggle with self-image issues since then. Though I choose not to feed this gnawing worry, it will always be there. I can't make it go away. No amount of self-fulfilling work, praying, hobbies, habits, or routines will ever make me feel 100% okay about my body. I'm at a comfortable 95% and I think that's the best it'll get. It's not because of the way I was made, it's because of the ideological glasses which were placed on me. Since I learned to see through them, it's difficult for me to see without them. I'm doing my best, though.
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