Looking for the Girls
by Andrea Brown-Thirston
After reading Unlearning the Myths that Bind Us Critiquing fairy tales and cartoons by Linda Christensen, I notice an eye catching title Looking for the Girls and an illustration truly unique with curiosity. Therefore, it capture my interest in diving into this text and figuring out what is behind the title and the illustration that intrigued my interest into to reading this particular text from Rethinking Popular Culture and Media Second Edition by Elizabeth Marshall and Ozlem Sensoy. Looking for the Girls is written by an African American female educator whose curiosity about what her students watch once they have left her classroom and head home. To further her interest and curiosity she spent an entire day watching both R & B and Hip Hop music videos.
Basically Looking for the Girls focus on the exploitation of women of colors in music videos by African American male artist and African American female artist. The music video is hypersexualizing Black Women and women of color in their videos. For example, music title "What do you want?" by DMX and "How many licks?" by Little Kim. In both videos females are half naked and making sexual gestures. For example laying on a car with legs spread open and in Little Kim's video her backup dancers are using hand gestures cupping their crotches.
She discussed how the negative effect of these imagery have on the young youth of today both male and female but also the effect on our African American community.
What do you want?
What is the effect of portraying women in video?
- Black girls internalizing the image and having this believe they can only accept the role of a sex object
- Teaches black women they can aspire to be a trophy
- African American male believe more money equals power and a beautiful women
- Does not portray a healthy, respectful, and equal relationship between a man an a women
In these music videos, women are portrayed as props an object with minimal to no contribution to the video except for the physical attributes (big breast and butt). Andrea indicates, "This lifestyle does not just dominate music videos; much of the "curriculum" in mainstream media focuses on this lifestyle as the essence of the American dream". The life style she is referring to is that if you have money and power, you can have this beautiful, sexy and seductive women. As Christensen indicated, "Our society's culture industry colonizes their mind and teaches them how to act, live, and dream" (pg. 175).
I am always astounded and embarrassed by these types of videos. I remember the sexualization of women in videos in the 80's,it escalated in the 90s, and I began to literally cringe and become offended by the way it was after the turn of the century. Just seems so necessary.
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