Jhally’s Dreamworlds II: Desire, Sex, Power in Music Video discusses the portrayal of women as sexual objects in music videos (especially videos in the “main stream”). Although Dreamlands is a bit dated and the music videos presented are probably outside the realm of popular culture, the overarching themes presented are still very present in modern music videos, especially rap music videos, which seem to subscribe especially closely to gender norms. And it’s not just the music industry—contemporary music, film, and magazines, things that I call “popular media” all seem to share these same images. This is significant because in this modern age we are bombarded with media, and there is a strong relationship between the messages that those media send and the way that women act and are treated in our society. Pink’s music video “Stupid Girls” helps illuminate this relationship by describing the harmful effects of the prevailing image of women in popular media.
Pink uses satire to critique the portrayal of women as sexual objects in popular music videos, saying, in the first verse, “What happened to the dream of a girl president? She’s dancing in the video next to 50 cent.” This sets up a stark contrast between the image of a woman of power and the image of a woman as a sexy extra in a rap music video. We’re all familiar with the female extras in rap videos who are often present in huge numbers, with their slim figures and ample breasts, dancing provocatively and wearing next to nothing. They are there as symbols of the success and power of the male rappers. Their huge numbers help cement their place as expendable extras. They have no independence and their definition of self is dependent upon the man’s. Firestone calls this “surrogate identity” (147). De Beauvoir describes this same phenomenon, saying, “She is defined and differentiated with reference to man”(4).
Of course, male rap videos are the most extreme example of objectification of women in modern popular music, but even when a woman’s role in a music video isn’t just to dance in the background and look sexy, there are noticeable differences between representation of the sexes. Men sing about how rich they are and how many girls are chasing after them. Women sing about how in love they are, how depressed they are that they’ve broken up with their boyfriends, and how beautiful they are. Here again we see surrogate identity—all these topics have to do with women relating to men. Of course there is complexity and overlap here, especially recently. Also, in a way, it makes sense that a woman would take a secondary role in the narrative of a male artist’s music video because, after all, he is the main character.
And yet, the music video that tells the story of the male artist being swept off of his feet by a woman who approaches him and makes all of the right moves is conspicuously absent. Instead, we tend to see the same power structure as is present in our fairy tales: man actively seeks woman, woman is swept off of her feet. The man’s narrative about romance with the opposite sex is often more about a macho display of an ability to “pick up chicks” than it is about finding “the one,” and here again the simple numbers devalue the individual woman, who is a “sweet hookup” for the night, but ultimately expendable. Notice the visual that the idiomatic expressions “pick up chicks” and “to be swept off one’s feet” create—the woman is physically raised by the man, but she is put on a pedestal, like a trophy, intended to sit there and look pretty. The man acts, and the woman receives. The woman’s narrative about romance is much more monogamous and focuses on emotional attachment, rather than skill with “picking up a guy.” Female monogamy and female objectification are not unrelated. As Firestone argues, “Women’s ‘clinging’ behavior is necessitated by their objective social position”(152). Women’s “surrogate identity” and “need for approval” (Firestone, 147), which both contribute to “clinging,” can be thought of as products of a system that, to a certain extent, paints women as objects to be possessed by men.
If a female musical artist brags about anything, it’s her body, which is not empowering in the same way that a male artist’s song about his wealth or his female groupies is. This emphasis on physical sexual appeal strengthens the image of woman as sexual object. Two scenes in Pink’s music video reference Paris Hilton, who became famous by modeling and being in a sex tape. Appropriately enough, Pink’s references to Paris include the sex tape and a popular TV ad for Carl’s Junior that features Paris seductively washing a car. In these cases, the body is used to appeal to male viewers, which can send the message to women that this is the way to communicate with men. And yet, some artists are able to take this fact and spin it in a way that is empowering. For example, Fergie in “My Humps” by the Black Eyed Peas, talks about her romantic life in a traditionally more masculine way, bragging about how many men chase after her and buy her gifts because of her “humps.” Though Fergie certainly enjoys a certain power over the men in this video, it’s important to note that it’s a power that involves exploiting her sexual appeal, which, as we see in other media, especially film, is the only type of power that it is really acceptable for women to have, and furthermore, it’s limiting. Think of the femme fatale and the female CEO. Notice first that the former is far more prevalent, and the latter is almost completely absent in popular media. Also, notice how the former involves an empowerment that is inseparable from femininity, while the latter doesn’t—the femme fatale is thought of as a powerful woman while the female CEO is just a powerful person. The female CEO (or, perhaps, the CEO who happens to be a woman) does more to combat the dominant paradigm of woman as “Other” (de Beauvoir, 4).
So what is significant about all of this? Representation of women in popular media plays an integral role in the behavior or women in our society. We get our image of femininity and female beauty from popular media. It gives us a goal to strive for. Of course, there is more complexity to this relationship—society must influence media in the same way that media influences society. However, what can be said for certain is that images in media and actions, behaviors, and ideals in society perpetuate each-other, increasing the influential power of social norms. Similarly, because this strong relationship between society and media exists, an effective way to create change in society is to change media.
Pink’s “Stupid Girls” speaks directly to these ideas. The narrative of the music video is framed around a young girl watching television, with a good angel on one shoulder and a bad angel on the other. The imagery on the TV starts with a classroom where a teacher is showing students how to act “ladylike,” instructing them on how to flip their hair back and reprimanding one girl for picking at her teeth. The little girl watching TV immediately imitates the girls on TV by flipping her own hair. This is a clear statement about the fact that girls, especially young ones, take their definition of feminine behavior from the images that they see on television. I described earlier how music videos perpetuate the same imbalanced power structure that we see in fairy tales. We’ve discussed in class the way that these fairy tales have a large impact on peoples’ characters because they’re heard during the early, formative years of peoples’ lives. I’d argue that images of women in popular media are just as impactful, and perhaps even more so because they are so much more culturally relevant, making them more real to the people viewing them. Also, let’s not underestimate the number of young girls who watch MTV over the shoulders of their big sisters, who want desperately to be older and are searching for what it means to be a mature woman.
The image of woman as passive sexual object places an emphasis on physical appearance. This is especially problematic because popular media presents a very limited view of feminine beauty; only skinny women with big boobs are seen as sexy. A huge burden is placed on women when the message is sent that success involves being physically attractive (and worse, attractive according to a very limiting definition), especially because physical appearance is largely genetic and difficult to change significantly. Most women end up feeling like they have“failed,” which is incredibly psychologically damaging.
Pink’s music video describes how this burden is incredibly destructive for women. The character undergoing cosmetic surgery and the one getting a spray-on tan both show the desperate (and expensive) lengths that women go to in order to be like the women they see in music videos and on magazine covers. Also, the scene with the bulimic girl throwing up in the bathroom speaks to issues of negative body image and eating disorders. There is a sense that women need to compete to have the skinniest body or the biggest boobs in order to get the attention of men. Both the character on the treadmill and the character in the bowling alley experience a lack of attention because other girls around them have more prominent breasts, and they have to be more showy in order to compete. These characters are obviously impacted by popular media’s image of beauty. These are characters that we have all met. The girl who runs over a guy with her expensive car and looks into the rear view mirror to see if he’s okay and ends up getting distracted in adjusting her lip gloss very accurately depicts several women that I grew up around, especially as a person who grew up in the affluent suburbs of Los Angeles. The same goes for the very last character that is shown on the TV—the trophy mom standing outside of her expensive house with her fancy car, Juicy Couture sweats, and her lifted face framed by long, blond hair. These are people that we have all met in our lives, and the fact that these characters are so real and relevant to us makes the viewer much more able to relate the absurdity of the “stupid girls” on screen to the absurdity of the women around them, and perhaps even themselves.
Here Pink gives us some hope for the future. The noticeably different character in the music video is the female president. She represents the opposite of the “stupid girl”—a woman with ambition and power that is unrelated to appearance and sexuality. There is also a brief image of a woman playing football. When the music ends, the little girl watching TV is presented with a choice between playing with a football or playing with Barbie dolls. Barbie represents an obsession with female appearance and an unattainable image of beauty. The girl listens to the good angel and chooses the football, showing the viewer that there are “smart people” out there.
In “Stupid Girls,” Pink not only illustrates the issue of objectification of women in media and its impact on women and girls around the country, but also to propose a solution. As mentioned before, the relationship between media and culture means that the two perpetuate each-other, but it also means that they have the power to change each-other. By getting this music video on MTV, Pink has taken affirmative action in questioning and changing the imagery of women as objects with which we are bombarded daily. With some luck, this change in the media that we consume may help our society form a new image of femininity that involves personal empowerment and is not dependent upon sexual appeal.
Works Referenced
Jhally, Sut: Dreamworlds II: Desire, Sex, Power in Music Video
Pink (Alecia Beth Moore): “Stupid Girls”
Firestone, Shulamith: The Dialectic of Sex
de Beauvoir, Simone: The Second Sex (introduction)*
* page numbers taken from printout of this electronic version:
http://marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/de-beauvoir/2nd-sex/introduction.htm
Originally written Oct 30th, 2008, for Bronski’s WGST10 at Dartmouth College
17
Jun 07
It Ain’t Broke But it Needs Fixin’: An Individual’s Search For Deeper Social Freedom
I take my freedom very seriously. In examining the steps that we, as a society, have taken to achieve the freedom that we enjoy today, most are content to simply conclude that they are blessed to live with such privilege. However, this retrospective reveals a far more depressing truth for me: in the case of social enslavement, one often does not know that they have been enslaved until they are freed. Women of the 1950′s were not aware of their enslavement until the reinvigoration of the feminist mindset. Many African Americans accepted a second-class status before the civil rights movements. Betty Friedan and Martin Luther King Jr. were ahead of their time because they questioned the social conventions of their time and discovered the overlooked injustice. They dared to seek more freedom, even when others asserted that they were “free enough.â€
I am a passionate and active person who is never content to accept the saying “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.†I have recently made the decision to reject my Jewish education and pronounce myself atheist. I live a very counter-culture lifestyle that involves wearing clothing that I have either fabricated myself or purchased from a thrift store and altered, listening to experimental music, and refusing to engage in absurd social traditions. In reflection upon the rationals for all of these choices, I have realized that they share a common motive: to assert my social freedom. The following is my attempt to emulate the work of Friedan and King by diagnosing the social enslavement of our time. I then go a step further and explain how I attempt to free myself and others of this enslavement. I may be probing for problems that don’t exist, but I’d much rather make people think by pointing out possibly nonexistent enslavement than than allow potentially real issues to go unnoticed. It’s an activist thing.
Let’s first examine a potential infringement upon peoples’ freedom of thought: Christianity. Christian religious ideology has become so ingrained in American society that many people are forced to be Christian. In many communities in the mid-western US, one is not free to “come out†as an atheist for fear of social rejection, familial rejection, and loss of employment. Each of the 43 presidents of the United States, with the exception of John F. Kennedy (a Roman Catholic), was raised in a family with affiliations with Protestant Christianity. This same trend is seen in Congress and virtually all other political offices: being religious is necessary to get the vote. It is nearly impossible to be elected if one holds an alternative religious view because enough Americans feel so strongly about their religious convictions that they refuse to be lead by someone who does not share them. Just as the “closet†atheists of the central US are forced to conform to religious customs, politicians need to at least display a façade of religious affiliation, as do most corporations who’s clientèle include that majority of Americans who are religious. This infectious nature of Christianity is further augmented by the missionary mentality that is a large part of many sects. True, it’s one thing to force someone to have religious convictions and another thing entirely to pressure someone into pretending to be religious. However, giving the appearance of being religious perpetuates the cycle of agreeing to religious tradition and ideology that may eventually convince oneself, convince others, or, more importantly, convince one’s children to accept religious dogma. I should be clear here that I recognize that there are many different sects of Christianity with varying beliefs and customs. As such, the religious communities that I am referring to are the more conservative, extremist ones that, although uncommon in sunny So’ Cal, are surprisingly common in the Midwest and appear to be on the rise with the recent flux of conservativism in the United States.
Many of these religious communities indoctrinate children who are too young to develop their own personal beliefs, enslaving their thoughts from infancy. They are scared into submission with threats of eternal suffering in hell or bribed into conformation with the promise of acceptance by youth groups, other members of the church community, and Jesus.
But what’s so damaging about religious thinking? Christian doctrine includes condemnation of certain thoughts because of their “impure,†“sinful,†or “unfaithful†nature. This has created a religious culture of refusing to even be around evolutionist propaganda or homosexuals, much less keep an open mind about them, for fear of being contaminated with their sin. In this way, religious communities are often unable to freely consider both sides of an argument. Thus not only are people limited in their freedom of thought by being forced into religious thinking in the first place, but this religious thinking is itself often an infringement upon their freedom of thought.
I want to be entirely clear that I do not believe that being religious is always damaging to one’s freedom of thought. However, the problem lies in the way that religious dogma are imposed either upon children who are too young to develop their own opinions and who are not given both sides of the argument or upon adults who are forced to be religious in order to be accepted by society or because they, again, are simply not familiar with both sides of the argument. These people are unfairly limited in their freedom of thought.
I now refuse to be identified as Jewish. Though I will always be a proud, cultural Jew, I am not a religious Jew, and I believe that it is important to voice that. This is my attempt to remedy the ailment of people being forced into faith for fear of social rejection. It’s a small contribution to the construction of a social atmosphere that is more accepting of atheists. I also take any chance I get to engage in dialog about religious ideas, even with strangers. In doing so, I hope to expose them to arguments for evolution (often citing the work of Richard Dawkins) or gay rights that their church communities may neglect to share with them, allowing them to take a more educated stance that considers both sides of the argument. I also listen to their religious arguments and ask them for suggestions for religious propaganda to read. Then I read it. I also often quote bible passages or religious propaganda. This is to assert that I am truly listening to and interested in their ideas, which I hope will inspire the same treatment of mine, which may remedy the issue of religious thinkers refusing to examine “sinful†thoughts. Finally, I do my best to advocate parent-child and student-teacher relationships that emphasize how to think and not what to think and encourage peaceful disagreement of opinions. I believe that this will help children develop their own beliefs and not be swayed to simply accept those of their parents or communities, securing their freedom of thought.
Let’s next examine a potential infringement on peoples’ freedom of individuality or freedom of self, social norms. In a similar way to people being forced to adopt religious ideologies in some communities, people are expected to cast their characters in the mold of a social group. The norms of the social “clique†system force people into an all-or-nothing alliance with an individual social group. Members of the black community may feel that it is necessary for them to play basketball and learn how to break dance or otherwise “act black†in order to be accepted. This is of course not to say that any black person who plays basketball is a victim of his social expectations, but the simple commonality of the culture of black basketball players is enough to ensure that there are plenty of black people that are being unwillingly forced into it. Women are pressured from infancy to “act girly†by wearing certain clothes, wearing makeup, and eventually “flirting†with boys. This is in large part the cause of the eating disorders that plague teenage girls who feel that they are failing to stay within the guidelines of how a girl should be. Even social groups with voluntary entrance have overly binding codes of conduct: Hipsters never watch MTV, goths never do ballet, and jocks never, under any circumstances, watch chick-flicks, all for fear of being rejected by their respective social groups. Another interesting example of this societal forcing of people into molds lies in the gay community, just like any other community, is plagued by its stereotypes, though perhaps even more so because of its rapidly developing nature.
As leading a homosexual life has become more socially acceptable due to increased commonality and media attention, some extreme stereotypes have been developed. The arm-flailing vision of homosexuality that we are shown by Jack of Will and Grace or the Fab Five of Queer Eye seems to have become the popular image of what it is to be gay. Though this view is entertaining, I worry that members of the gay male community may feel that emulating this persona is their only way of being confident in their homosexuality or of being accepted by the gay community. I of course do not mean to suggest that all gay men who act this way are just copying what they see on TV, I am, again, simply pointing out that the commonality of this stereotype gives it the potential to be imposed upon others. One response to this stereotype has been to assert a new “butch†persona to counteract the common “femme†one. This same dynamic of “butch†vs “femme†exists in the lesbian community. This creates a pressure to pick a side and ignores the fact that being romantically attracted to the same sex does not need to have any effect on one’s comportment. Another problem is the common sexual orientation scale that is limited to gay and straight, with little recognition of intermediate stances. Only recently has the word “queer†been re-appropriated to be a politically-correct, all-encompassing term for not-entirely-straight sexual orientations (with some people even arguing that nobody is “completely†straight). The “butch†vs “femme†mentality and the limited sexual orientation scale both contribute to a culture that attempts to force gays into a mold, often forgetting that the only requirement to be gay is to be romantically attracted to the same sex.
I’m a straight male that wears tight t-shirts and jeans. I am comfortable with socializing with homosexuals and commenting on the appearance of other guys. One reason for doing this is to give the homosexual lifestyle a well-deserved chance so that I can be sure that I am not simply ignoring an undiscovered gay side of myself. But this also serves to blur the line between gay and straight males and create a social atmosphere where a straight males don’t feel that they have to steer away from “gay†personality traits and gay (or “queerâ€) males don’t feel that they have to deny their “straight†personality traits.
I also make my own clothing. This is my attempt to create my persona from scratch. By making my own clothes or altering clothes that I buy from thrift stores, I am taking ownership of this aspect of my persona; forming it myself instead of casting myself into a pre-existing mold. Another way that some people go about doing this is using social networking tools such as myspace, facebook, or second life, where one can literally craft one’s own persona from scratch without the limitations of one’s uncontrollable traits (such as gender and skin color) and without the pressure to “fit in†with their immediate surroundings, as there is a lively community for every type of person on the internet.
Maybe I’m just another Green Day-loving counter-culture angsty teenager who lashes out against society and breaks the rules just to be “coolâ€. But this much is for certain: People who follow the rules rarely make history. I take my freedom very seriously, and I am not content to be “free enough.†I hope to live a life of example that will persuade people to question things. I hope people will be persuaded to question the beliefs that they were brought up with by seeking to understand the other half of the argument instead of rejecting it. I hope people will be persuaded to disappoint society by living outside their social stereotypes and creating their own mold to cast their character. Most importantly, I hope people will be inspired to “fix it,†even if it “ain’t broke.â€