Interesting...

  In one of my classes, we took a nice look at 'hip hop culture' and its strong visual (music videos) association with dominant/aggressive masculinity and the objectification of women. After this class, my friend and I were discussing this prevalence of male violence and female objectification... she suggested something interesting: Were the artists that were spoken of male? Actually, yes; they all were. So, she and I decided to do some research and looked up female hip-hop artists: Lauryn Hill, Beyonce. The search didn't really prove her point but, I was sure she was on to something. So, I looked up more female artists/groups such as: MC Lyte, Sista (Misy Elliott's first group), Missy Elliott, No Doubt/ Gwen Stefani, Rihanna, Salt-N-Pepa, Lin Que, Mary J Blige, Aalyiah and Lil' Kim. I found a pattern... the music videos and lyrics of these ladies that were released before the mid 1990's  are generally "clean".. that is to say, there are very few men shown in the videos and when shown, they are 'backup', fully dressed non-aggressive dancers. The videos do not depict the female artist(s) as sexual objects.... until the mid/late 90s. I don' t know what happened but, Sista's songs in the early early 1990s, about love and sisterhood-- showing fully dressed women rap artists.. just singing... turned into "Pass that Dutch"... in 2003 that showed very scarcely dressed women, in a line shaking it... almost screaming: I am only meant for sex! Woo!... Ok, let's throw up, now. I also noticed that, no matter the year, if the female artist co-sang/co-produced a song/music video with a black or latin male artist, the women were more likely to be depicted as sexual objects and male violence was more prevalent however, when co-singing with Eminem, Rihanna was fully dressed, video showing mostly her face (not body), the other white girls in the video were also not objectified but, the male dominance/aggression was still very relevant. I couldn't find that much evidence for Gwen Stefani or really find many white female hip hop artists... Does race really play that BIG of a role in the prevalence of male aggression and female objectification in contemporary hip hop culture? This is serious...