This is by Joe Paterson ( @thejoepaterson ):
http://someotherramblings.wordpress.com/2012/05/13/why-does-music-seem-unable-to-respect-women/
In my place of work (once it has closed to the public), we inevitably listen to the monotonous tones of a radio station that despite not being based in the CAPITAL city, decides to pretend that it is, so names itself thus.
This radio station plays the same playlist on a seemingly unshuffled from week-to-week basis, and it did not take me long to start listening to what all the ‘rappers’ and ‘singers’ were talking about.
The vast majority of the time: Women.
Now this in itself is obviously not a bad thing, but like the adult style comedy hidden underneath a seemingly innocent Disney film, there’s always an underlying message.
In a 2hr subjection to the so called ‘music’, I heard a few songs in particular that bothered me. One of these said songs was ‘International Love’ which appears to feature some breed of dog as the leading artist (I am of course talking about the rapper Pitbull). One of the verses in the song features the lyrics:
“In Romania, she pulled me to the side and told me “Pit, you can have me and my sister”. In Lebanon, yeah the women are bomb. And in Greece, you’ve guessed it, the women are sweet…”
“En Cuba la cosa esta dura, but the women get down, if you know what I mean…”
“In Brazil, is freaky big o’booty, and they bounce, blue, yellow, and green…”
All of this from one song, and frankly, these are some of the more respectable lyrics found in mainstream music today. Is it really any wonder why teenage girls and younger are becoming more self-conscious about their image? Is it really any wonder why many feel the need to present themselves to the opposite sex as objects?
Music videos are no better. In 99% of music videos today you will inevitably see women wearing next to nothing and bumping and grinding against the artist or fellow women, as though they were playing bumper cars. This glamorisation of acting in a slutty way only contributes more to the sexualisation of young women, and encourages young men to view women as nothing but shagging machines. Horrible, but true.
Obviously, I can’t say that this is true for every young man and women in the world, but for a great many in Western society it is.
Unfortunately, I can’t help but come to the conclusion that music will not change. ‘Shawty’ is apparently here to stay. I don’t know quite who ‘Shawty’ is, but she seems to have a lot of rapper boyfriends…
And even if a change was made, it’s not as if the general public would find Pitbull rapping about dating a girl, taking her to the park for a picnic, and not having sex before marriage as particularly entertaining.
Sometimes I despair at society.
Oh, and as a musician/songwriter, I funnily enough don’t feel compelled to mention ‘Shawty’ in any of my songs…
Andi (@aoiichi_san ) responds:
I don’t think the issue with any of this is sexism in music, rather sex in music. I’ll start with some of the passages quoted
“In Romania, she pulled me to the side and told me “Pit, you can have me and my sister”. In Lebanon, yeah the women are bomb. And in Greece, you’ve guessed it, the women are sweet…”
I think if it was something like “I told that girl I wanted to have her and her sister” or something along those lines there would be some validity to a claim of sexism. But rather, it’s about a woman who grabs him, pulls him aside and says “Pit, you can have me and my sister”- a forward woman who knows what she wants sexually. Good on her. The rest of it- “the women are bomb”, “the women are sweet” simply states his appreciation for the women. I don’t think this has anything to do with sexism, or ‘objectification’. The whole song is simply about sex. On the other hand, this assertion and fixation around attractive women, can be seen as a way in which rappers try to assert their masculinity or heterosexuality, something important in the kind of gangsta culture around rap- you need to be a ‘hard man’, a tuffdawg.
As for young girls becoming too self-conscious about their image, that’s terrible. But why are you letting them listen to Chris Brown, nevertheless a song about sex at such a young age? More of an issue with parental control and education, I think. Songs are works of fiction; I don’t think it’s bad whatever topic they cover, such as sex. The thing is people need to be educated on how fiction differs from reality.
“This glamorisation of acting in a slutty way only contributes more to the sexualisation of young women, and encourages young men to view women as nothing but shagging machines.”
Except, the women in these videos consent to these roles and moves. Some women want to be sluts. Deal with it. Men can like sex too. Deal with it. I don’t believe in this sexualisation, or that it encourages men to look on women as “nothing but shagging machines”. This is the same rhetoric that is used against porn and tits in magazines (this has been critiqued plenty of times elsewhere so I won’t go into it). It’s just part of the same old tiring dogma nowadays, that anything that has sex, women, told from a male perspective or with a focus on women is sexist. [It seems to only be acceptable if women are 'sluts' or promiscuous in a disconnect to actual men. That's why some rally against porn, or songs about sex, because men are involved at a deep or important level. Unfortunately, men are part of the game.] The critique of music videos is also incredibly biased- “women wearing next to nothing, and grinding against the artist or fellow women”- I was pretty astounded to hear this, because this is something that is just as common to men. In music videos, women always have their erogenous zones, breasts covered up- while men often fully bare their chests, showing off their muscle, as well as showing off their toned arms and legs. For instance, in Rihanna’s “Where Have You Been”, we have in one video both things- in one segment, we have a group of men dancing behind Rihanna, showing off and perfoming moves which emphasise their arm muscle and chests (topless of course), while in the next segment we have some women who nicely have their chests covered up. Both groups pull off some pretty sexual moves which emphasise their ‘desirable’ bits (men, muscle and pecs, women legs and arse), which again I think is a manifestation of sex in general, which is different to sexism- just as how porn isn’t misogynist (I think how sex and sexuality permeate culture is a topic worth research and discussion, but I don’t think it’s always a negative thing). And this is just one example of one music video, on one topic.
“Why does music seem unable to respect women?” is also an incredibly sensationalist, and unfair appraisal or title. Music is a pretty broad area, and home to plenty of genres and unique cultures/personalities within it. Rap is not the same as Metal. Metal is not the same as Justin Bieber. Justin Bieber isn’t the same as Pavarotti. And Pavarotti isn’t the same as Chris Brown. And I don’t really like Chris Brown, anyway.
http://pastebin.com/070rpLPW
Andi wins this one hands down. Yes, there are examples of sexism in music but Paterson goes the lazy route in blaming black ‘urban’ music in a series of ‘moral panic’ arguments that have been used about black popular music from jazz, through Elvis to drum ‘n’ bass to Chris Brown.
Second, Andi’s point that ‘It seems to only be acceptable if women are ‘sluts’ or promiscuous in a disconnect to actual men’ zeroes in on precisely the flaw in so much contemporary feminist writing around sexuality. Ariel Levy’s Female Chauvinist Pigs looks like a key suspect in the re-emergence of ‘social purity’ feminism: girls could ‘Go Wild’ as long as there were no men and no cameras around, otherwise it’s wrong and misogynist (code for ‘I don’t approve of what they do’).
Third, in Paterson’s world men aren’t desired, they desire. the women don’t want sex; sex gets ‘done’ to them. Honestly it’s like Madonna never happened (and I suspect for some feminists, they wish she hadn’t).
And frankly, if his critique ends with ‘Oh, and as a musician/songwriter, I funnily enough don’t feel compelled to mention ‘Shawty’ in any of my songs…’ then he’s free to write and sing about whatever he likes instead: I hear.that the dark forces of Lord Cthulhu who will devour us all and plunge us into endless night is a pretty popular topic. (Other musicians might want to sing about getting laid instead.)