Representation '2'

 

 

Nowadays many hip hop artists will include certain women in their videos to attract men to watch it and for the male audience to enjoy the video more. Not only will they make sure they certainly have the right girl but they will need to ensure she can dance in the right sexual way and have certain assets like big ‘booty’ or large boobs.

‘In many rap videos women have no identity except as sexual playthings and "eye candy”’.-

 I definitely agree with this statement because many rap videos will express the fact that the women are all there for the rapper. The women are usually always flocking one man who is splashing his money or drinking expensive alcohol. Such as in Wiz Khalifa’s video ‘On my level’ he sits in a chair while drinking and smoking with women flocking him. The women are used to make the rapper look bigger and better as they make him seem like their god. Many videos will show the rappers having sex or kissing lots of different video girls. This is proven in 50 Cents video ‘Candy Shop’ where he is sexually touching and kissing a variety of different video girls. Usually though the women are just there for eye candy that will attract male attention, this is to make male or female viewers enjoy it better as they have good looking girls dancing on their screen.

‘These images do provide pleasures to some viewers. But the concern is that men may internalise the notion that women are nothing more than sexual objects waiting to be used’-

. I believe some of this statement is true as a fair amount of men will agree and see women as nothing more than sexual objects. A majority of viewers will only be watching it for the women whereas some for just the music. Watching many influencing rap videos such as Asap Rocky’s video ‘Goldie’ which is explicit and has nude scenes will definitely influence an older generation but more so a younger generation to view girls as sexual objects. ‘Waiting to be used’ is a good way to put it as many young boys watching will be ‘wanting to use’ these video girls which are purposefully trying to attract boys to the video by acting in a sexual manor.

‘These sorts of images are not unique to hip hop. Objectified female bodies are everywhere. They appear throughout our culture in films, advertisements, television programmes etc. However, within music videos, this is virtually the ONLY vision of women available.’-

Personally I think that hip hop videos have started this ‘trend’ of by attracting publicity to their videos by adding lots of video girls acting sexually. Then movies programmers etc. have realised this and started to make women act sexually and have BIG impacts on younger girls of this generation. What these girls are seeing on their computer screens and TV’s is making them act and dress in a way that is making them grow up a lot faster, and the clothe they wear make them look a lot more mature but liable to have comments and attention from men a lot older than them. I disagree with the last part of this statement though, ‘However, within music videos, this is virtually the ONLY vision of women available’ to make that statement correct I would add that in Hip hop or many genres of music videos this is the only vision of women we see. That statement refers to all kinds of music videos such as classical which is very unlikely to have women in bikinis dancing on tables in it.