Op-Ed

Article Is Rihanna a Complicated Woman or is it Complicated to be a Black Woman in the Rap Industry: Element 4 The messages of rap-music, strip clubs and other media about women By: Mike Norman (Hope for Brighter Days Social Media Contributor) The discussion continues in our 5 part article series regarding Rihanna, rap-music and the relationship between her, messages in media, culture and the abuse against women perpetuated by this web of factors. Article 4, which is our discussion today, will look less at strip clubs and actual physical/sexual abuse and focus more on the messages that precede these realities. What messages are conveyed by the culture of clubs, by the sexual and physical assault and what messages not only feed this but are fed by this reality. First lets discuss some key terms to get everyones vernacular, vocabulary and terminology on the same page. Here are a few terms that are prevalent in much of the research from current articles as well as classes I took in my social studies and womens classes: Mechanistic Dehumanization: Denying human nature to others, representing them as objects or automata. Or as Montague and Matson (1983) put it the reduction of humans to machines. Objectification: Treating a person as a commodity or an object, without regard to their personality or dignity. Sexual Objectification: treating a person merely as an instrument of sexual pleasure, making them a "sex object". Sexualization: Similar to objectification, except with the added notion that, involves the imposition of the sexuality of adult persons on girls, who are emotionally, psychologically and physically unprepared for this at their particular stage of development; prematurely. Hypersexualize: To make extremely sexual; to accentuate the sexuality of Pornified: The increasing occurrence and acceptance of sexual themes and explicit imagery in popular or mainstream culture Now that we have identified some essential terms and brought everyones vocabulary to the same page, we can begin to break down these things more relevantly to the subject matter and discussion at hand. Many of you have studied this subject matter before. I am not going to try to teach you things you dont know, I simply am going to connect some of these concepts into this article series and draw things together. Media, Marketing and How Women Are Objectified:

Cropping Heads and Isolating Body Parts This is one of the main ways in which media advertises their products, while objectifying women. Removing a womans head from a photo is removing her humanity. The head contains the personhood of any human and to remove it is to focus merely on the body, or the impersonal part of the human. The head is where we receive and give eye contact to one another. Eye contact is a major method of communication. Eyes can convey a persons emotions and interests, and engaging in eye contact, in most cultures, represents respect and engaging in the very person themselves. The head is also where the mouth and the brain are stored. Through the use of our brain and the communication tool, which is our mouth, people convey thoughts, feelings and ideas and can express what they enjoy and what they dislike. It is essentially the central way in which a person can express their inner essence to another person and is the main tool for how we form relationships with one another. When an advertiser removes the head, they remove the person. In the same way, if we simply focus on a body part anywhere on the body, we are removing the womans personhood and sending the message this woman is a machine with which to fulfill sexual desires through, whether she wants you to have sex with her or not.

Cropping Heads [Isolating Body Part (w/ Ludacris)] (Chicken-n-Beer, Def Jam Recordings 2003) Being a man and being exposed to locker room talk aka testosterone driven male conversations, Men sometimes discuss women, the same way one of these advertisements do. They ask each other who would you do (do means have sex with). In response, sometimes men will jokingly say __________ is so butterface or shes a total bagger. Butterface is slang for a longer phrase everything is pretty about her but-her-face. Similarly, if a woman is deemed a bagger that means that

men would be willing to have sex with her because her body is appealing, but only on the condition that they wouldnt have to look at her face while having sex.

These methods of advertising as well as this mindset that some men have, contributes to the overall pornification and sexual objectification of women in our culture. It mechanistically dehumanizes women and the act of sex itself. Sex is supposed to join two persons together - two personalities together. It is not simply for experiencing sexual pleasure. The head-cropping mentality turns humans into machines, with the soul purpose of fulfilling our own sexual desires in a one-way transaction. Sex is meant to be two-way as well, where its not just about what you can get out of the experience, but what you can give to the other person as well. Turning humans into impersonal machines is the same mentality that leads to sexual and physical assault in the first place. The person you are assaulting or abusing becomes simply an object to control or overpower. Strip Club Messages Strip clubs are contributing majorly to the pornification of modern mainstream culture, especially in the United States. As I write this article, I am listening to Miley Cyrus We Cant Stop (RCA Records, 2013) singing To my home girl there with the big butt, shaking it like we at a strip club... Similar to Rihannas Pour It Up lyrics (Def Jam, 2012) I referenced in the first article in this series. It is becoming more frequently common for female artists to glorify and endorse strip clubs. On March 5th Newton Media Group released Strip Club Queens: Atlanta on UrbanClout.Com. This is a reality show that follows the life of 5 strippers in an Atlanta strip club. They are currently on season 2 as we speak. VH1 was at one point in talks with Newton Media Group, but decided to not pick up the show. HBO has also aired series on sex industry subject matter such as Cathouse (2005) was a hit fictional show on HBO. Now they are working on a docu-drama called King of Diamonds: Make it Rain. This show, again, follows the lives and inter-workings of the King of Diamonds strip club in Miami, FL. The show will focus on the lives of the

club owners, managers, celebrities, and of course, the strippers. It is self-described as: at the very heart of the piece is a real story. [Owner] Terry managing a thriving business and juggling his other business ventures. At the same time, being a father figure to his employees, giving advice, coaching, paternally guiding some of the girls, making sure that his team of managers (the four horse men) and his self are on the same page, keeping his "A" list celebs clients, music entertainers and athletes happy...and doing all of this as a happily married man with a family of his own! (Youtube, 2012) There are others that I wont go into, but my point is, that Strip Clubs are not solely buildings anymore where people have to pursue entrance into, in order to experience strippers, nudity and lap dances. Strip Clubs are being advertised as innocent places, of adult entertainment. They are being pushed on the average household and even children, through artists and singers like Rihanna and Miley Cyrus, which are artists whose core audience is 10 30. Through the success of these various reality shows, strip clubs are only becoming more mainstream and the message that women are sex objects, and that the way to have true power and success in life is for women to offer up their body and sexual pleasure to men is what is prevalent in media of all types these days. Rap Musics Messages Rap music has been prevailing these messages long before the most recent intensity of the hypersexualized media wave. I am personally a huge fan of rap music, but I am selective based on content. I have been listening to rap music and hip hop that stems from the infancy of it with groups like Grandmaster Flash, Dougie Fresh and The Get Fresh Crew, N.W.A and A Tribe Called Quest to name a few. I have listened to everything in between and currently listen to current rap music as well from artists like Lil Wayne, Trey Songz, Flo Rida and others. Despite the increase in discussing strip clubs in more mainstream rap music and hip-hop, the actual presence of degradation and dehumanization of women through song lyrics has been present since the very beginning. The focus on sex in rap and hip-hop music in mainstream music culture could be traced back without argument to Salt-N-Peppas Lets Talk about Sex (Next Plateau Records, 1990). It was present before this period in music by artists such as NWA, who could be possibly credited with starting Gangsta-Rap with their violent and misogynistic lyrics. ( Since 1986, Rap made a major shift away from its B-Boy days, which relied heavily on party-themed dance music, with high elements of funk and disco music, and became more angry, more sexually explicit and more violent. This is when rap music started calling women bitches and hoes and singing about how they shouldnt talk back to any man and that if they did they would get slapped down. Women were painted as dumb, dependent, drug addicted individuals that were a hassle for a man to care for, but their only redeeming factor is that they might give a man oral sex or

pleasure. This is the birthplace of much of the content of todays modern rap music that glorifies mens status and importance and reduces womens importance to being purely sexual in nature. Rihannas Participation in These Messages To continue with the previous discussion and transition to the subject of Rihannas involvement in these messages, the discussion of female rappers lyrical content comes into play. Female artists, such as Rihanna, participate in these degrading and disrespectful messages of women through their own music. Lil Kim, Da Brat and Foxy Brown were the first breakout solo female artists in the rap game, and their debut albums focus heavily on sex and materialism (Williams, 2005). Lil Kims debut album Hard Core (Atlantic Records, 1996) was described as sexually explicit and raunchy. Lil Kim has been viewed as having lyrics that are sexual and masculine. Interestingly enough, Lil Kim believes that part of what makes her stand out is that she is actually combating these messages purveyed often by male rappers. Emily Newman puts it this way in her article entitled Female Rap Artists and the Establishment of Female Identities: She [Lil Kim] turns the table on the dominant hegemony of mainstream rap by adopting an aggressive, traditionally male form of vocal delivery and language. With the above words, she is describing how she is using men to satisfy her desires. This completely contradicts the roles of men and women created in most male rap songs. Typically, it is the man using and objectifying the woman. However, Lil Kim flips the script. Not only does she objectify men, but she is also in control of her own body. This role reversal is furthered with the male singer, Sisqo, who sings in the chorus, So, how many licks does it take till you get to the center of the? Typically, females tend to sing the chorus while the male artists rap. Having a man sing reinforces Lil Kims masculinity and emphasizes her power over men. (Newman, 2012) There are many who disagree with Lil Kims effect on these messages that degrade women. Many believe she is only perpetuating the belief that women are hyper sexual creatures that will sleep with men on a whim, and that it is not about the relationship, but it is about getting sex at all costs, while ignoring the persons humanity. I am not here to argue in this debate, but to present it to our readers. In the end, Rihanna also participates in this. Lyrically she sings about her enjoyment of being in strip clubs (as well as enjoying strip clubs in her personal life). She also sexually portrays herself provocative limited clothing on her album covers and through publicity of herself in music videos and print media outlets. Even if she believes in respecting women and their bodies, she also is part of the machine and willingly participates in sexual objectification and dehumanization of herself and other women through her lyrics, promotion and lifestyle.

Conclusion What I believe summarizes this article, is well communicated through this quote from a research article from University of Michigan, entitled Objectification Theory. An indicator that our culture is highly saturated in heterosexuality is shown through the socially sanctioned right of all males to sexualize all females, regardless of age or status (Westkott, 1986 & Schur, 1983) This quotation is an old one as far as research standards for a 2013 paper is concerned, but the succinctness and poignancy of this quote is perhaps the most powerful wordage I have found. It describes the overall message that is being perpetuated through this culture of sexual objectification of women through Rap Music, Media, Strip Clubs and even Rihannas celebrity image, song lyrics and self promotion through media. Rihanna is not the enemy or the root of these issues, she is simply a participant - a victim of the system, yet someone who should take responsibility for her presentation and messages to our society and present herself in a healthy and positive way. Men often think this is harmless; the fact that we have been given a sanctioned right to sexualize females regardless of age or status. When we sexualize women of all ages, other types of expressions of this accepted degradation of women become evident. Sexually degrading women brings about other degradation of women. Sexual assault is a sexual degradation of women, but through an extreme violent assault of that woman; forced sex without her consent as well as to her emotional, psychological and physical harm. Throw in the possibility that because women of all ages are degraded and sexually objectified, the notion that children are also sexually assaulted. Sometimes, young girls, look as if they have the sexual maturity of a woman and therefore, many teen-girls are raped and assaulted. I am not going to even discuss rape and sexual assault of young girls with no biologically mature sexual characteristics. That is better left for another day. Again, I ask, is this ok? Are strip clubs harmless? Is it ok for Rihanna to sexualize herself and advocate for self-sexualized objectification and promote this image to young girls? Should advertisers be allowed to remove womens humanity by removing their heads from magazine and billboard ads? Is pornification of our society health, safe and beneficial to the women in our society? These are rhetorical questions from my point of view, but each reader has to make their own choice and observation. The purpose of this article is to start a conversation. This is an article that is being presented on the greatest conversation platforms of this age social media ---. I do not profess to be an expert, but I profess to be a person with passion about these issues and a person who knows how to back up discussion with research. I am seeking all of those in the Hope for Brighter Days community on Twitter and Facebook to share in this conversation with me, and start looking for solutions.

Thank you for all that you do in our community to end abuse. References Hypersexualize. (n.d.). Definitions.net. Retrieved July 12, 2013, from http://www.definitions.net/definition/hypersexualize. Montague, A., & Matson, F. (1983). The dehumanization of man. New York: McGraw-Hill. Newman, E. (2012, December 03). [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://blog.richmond.edu/rapmusic/2012/12/03/test-2/ Pornification http://oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/pornificatio n Schur, E. M. (1983) Labeling women deviant: Gender, stigma, and social control. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Sexualization http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2009_2014/documents/femm/p r/904/904064/904064en.pdf Westkott, M. (1986). The feminist legacy of Karen Horney. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press Williams, S. (2005). Rap hip-hop timeline 1990-1999. Retrieved from http://www.digitaldreamdoor.com/pages/best_rap-timeline2.html Other Interesting Articles to Check Out http://www.sanchezlab.com/pdfs/FredricksonRoberts.pdf http://www.selfdeterminationtheory.org/SDT/documents/2010_MollerDeci_GPIR. pdf http://newyorksociologist.org/11/Berberick2011.pdf http://psychcentral.com/news/2011/08/11/medias-growing-sexualization-of- women/28539.html http://www.buffalo.edu/news/releases/2011/08/12769.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/20/king-of-diamonds-reality- _n_1612862.html http://www.loop21.com/mistresses-of-atlanta-show-trailer

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/therootdc/post/strip-club-queens-atlanta- to-debut-march-5/2013/03/04/61908ca4-7fa1-11e2-b99e- 6baf4ebe42df_blog.html http://msmagazine.com/blog/2012/07/03/sexual-objectification-part-1-what-is- it/