Archived from Palomar College Communications Department 2020 Submissions
By: H. Elizabeth Williams
Throughout time, violent lyrics have degraded women, promoted them as sexual objects, described them as victims of domestic abuse and affected their own self-image. How do these lyrics translate to our everyday lives? Are women talked down to by men? Do women verbally attack other women? Does this affect respect, expectations and opinions of women?
I find it fascinating that violent lyrics have degraded women for centuries, especially recently, and now when women take a stand and use body empowerment lyrics all of a sudden they are judged and ridiculed. Take WAP by Cardi B for example. Here, you have a song talking about a women’s wet private parts and the confidence women should have because of it. When this song came out it was seen as vulgar and they rap explicitly about their own sexual encounters. Why is it a problem when women do it but not when men do it talking about their seual encounters and how they have a side chick and just being very unloyal?
This tragic phenomenon has often been reflected in novels and on film, but perhaps the most common occurrence of depictions of violence against women comes in popular music. Indeed, the often innocuous world of pop music has cultivated its own genre of woman-killing songs. “Violent misogyny in popular song did not begin with recent controversial offerings from acts like Guns 'N' Roses and 2 Live Crew. There's an old, largely southern, folk genre known as the "murder ballad." And as long as men have sung the blues, they have told stories of killing the women who have "done them wrong." In a common scenario, a man catches "his" woman with another man and kills them both in a jealous rage. In the 1920s, Lonnie Johnson sang a song called "Careless Love," in which he promises to shoot his lover numerous times and then stand over her until she is finished dying. In "Little Boy Blue," Robert Lockwood threatens to whip and stab his lover; while Robert Nighthawk's "Murderin' Blues" suggests a deliberate values judgment in the premeditation: the song says that prison chains are better than having a woman cheat and lie to you,” according to “Killing Women: A Pop-music tradition” from the 1995 American Humanist Association. Lets talk about Rihanna for a moment. In 2009 she was abused by Chris Brown and the media was all over it and torturing rihanna all over it. She told the magazine: "Well, I just never understood that, like how the victim gets punished over and over. It's in the past, and I don't want to say, 'Get over it,' because it's a very serious thing that is still relevant; it's still real.” Now as a 9 year old at the time, none of my friends and i understood what abuse meant. And it seems most adults didnt know how to handle the situation either. Chris Brown was only sentenced to 5 years probation and even after that the pair was seen still together in 2012. This just shows that women, especially celebrities don’t really have a say in t=what they do or how the media portrays them especially after an assault.
Next we have Kanye West, who is quite the character these days. He, as well as many other rappers, say "First thing is I’m an artist and as an artist I will express how I feel with no censorship." Associate professor P. Cougar Hall of Brigham Young University, along with professor Joshua West and student Shane Hill, conducted a study published in 2012 that analyzed the sexual content of lyrics in Billboard Hot 100 songs. “In the past, studies had just looked at degrading lyrics, usually lyrics that are degrading to women or hypersexualized. We weren’t just looking at songs that talked about sex, but we looked at songs where women were objectified,” Hall said in an interview with the Deseret News. “(Sexualization is) when sexuality is forced upon girls in particular, when their value is essentially just the sum of their sexuality,” according to Deseret News. In a study titled “Exposure to Degrading Versus Nondegrading Music Lyrics and Sexual Behavior Among Youth,” Steven C. Martino and his associates tracked a group of adolescents over three years to assess the correlation between the music they listened to and their sexual behaviors. They found that sexually degrading lyrics correlated with higher rates of sexual activity in adolescents. “Our research… does suggest that degrading sexual lyrics do more than ‘go in one ear and out the other,’” Martino’s study said. “It may be that listening to popular music, regardless of its content, results in heightened physiologic arousal that, through a process of excitation transfer, incites sexual behavior among teens.” Degrading lyrics were defined in the study as those that portrayed women as objects and men as sexually voracious and insatiable, Martino said in an interview. They also included lyrics that portrayed sex as inconsequential.
In a 2010 speech at the BET awards, Nicki Minaj says, “I’m fighting for women,” and rightfully so. She is the rap leading lady on a stage that has always been full of men. Her latest bootylicious video seems to support that statement: she is a strong woman who knows her own sexuality and no one, no man, has any say in it, not even Drake. She promotes self-love and shows the world that her buns are beautiful. This is just like I said about Cardi B and her WAP Music video, people find it degrading and disrespectful that women are taking charge of their own bodies.
I find it fascinating that violent lyrics have degraded women for centuries, especially recently, and now when women take a stand and use body empowerment lyrics all of a sudden they are judged and ridiculed. Take WAP by Cardi B for example. Here, you have a song talking about a women’s wet private parts and the confidence women should have because of it. When this song came out it was seen as vulgar and they rap explicitly about their own sexual encounters. Why is it a problem when women do it but not when men do it talking about their seual encounters and how they have a side chick and just being very unloyal? So yes, throughout time violent lyrics have degraded women, promoted them as sexual objects, described them as victims of domestic abuse such as Rihanna and affected their own self-image.
Cited:
Ahern, Alexa. “Nicki Minaj and Meghan Trainor Miss Feminist Mark.” Vox Magazine, 9 Sept. 2014, www.voxmagazine.com/beauty/nicki-minaj-and-meghan-trainor-miss-feminist-mark/article_9bf10dcc-a34f-52e2-a08c-ff7f449a2cc3.html.
Deseret News. “Literal Lyrics? The Effects of Sex, Violence and Misogyny in Popular Music.” Deseret News, Deseret News, 22 Apr. 2016, www.deseret.com/2016/4/21/20587102/literal-lyrics-the-effects-of-sex-violence-and-misogyny-in-popular-music.
"Killing women: a pop-music tradition.." The Free Library. 1995 American Humanist Association 05 Oct. 2020 https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Killing+women%3a+a+pop-music+tradition.-a017100249
“The Right to Free Speech Includes Rap. Misunderstanding It Makes Bad Law | Lily Hirsch.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 30 Dec. 2014, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/30/free-speech-rap-music-bad-law.
Thelilynews. “Some Are Criticizing Cardi B's 'WAP' for Being 'Vulgar.' Her Fans Say to Get over It.” Https://Www.thelily.com, The Lily, 12 Aug. 2020, www.thelily.com/some-are-criticizing-cardi-bs-wap-her-fans-say-to-get-over-it/.
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