Hip-Hip Hooraaaay

Rap music has been a popular from of expression for almost three decades now. This is not to say that hip-hip has been without its controversies throughout the years. Hip-hop has been blamed for the promotion of drugs and alcohol, as well encouragement to degrade women. The latter has perhaps been the larger of the issues through the 80’s 90’s and some of the 2000’s. However nowadays women are willing, if not eager to appear in these rap music videos, consisting of scantily-clad women parading around men, while the rappers deliver lines such as, “B*tches ain’t sh*t but hoes and tricks.” This would not seem very empowering, but from Ariel Levy’s point of view in, Female Chauvinist Pigs, this is an all too familiar form of feminism, apparent in this ‘third wave’. The form of media that I chose to analyze is the now infamous “Tip Drill” song and music video from Grammy winning artist Nelly. This song, as well as the video, has been publicly ridiculed for it’s demeaning lyrics, and images of naked women, and men defiling them. But why do these women choose to participate in this? In what is perhaps the epitome of “raunch culture”?
One of Levy’s main arguments is that, "all empowered women must be overtly and publicly sexual.” But does this mean that women who participate in the raunchiest of acts such as flashing a Girls Gone Wild crew, or appearing in a rap video have reached some type of empowerment? I think Levy would agree with me, in saying that the women who populate this video are doing nothing more than allowing men to display their dominance. Looking through the lens of Levy, I am appalled, and feel as if this form of media actually succeeds in bringing women as low as one would think was humanly possible. However, as a man, upon my first time seeing this music video I was not appalled or ashamed, but awed and completely untouched by the degradation of these women. To this day, the video does not strike me in any way as any form of empowerment to these women. I suppose one could argue that because most of the sexually explicit scenes involve one or more women, perhaps this is what Levy meant when some women proclaimed that being empowered meant working with men, and feeling entitled the, “cigar afterwards, and the strip club even later.” Indeed many other female rappers such as Trina and Lil’ Kim feature multiple women in their music videos as opposed to men. According to Levy, the women who feel powerful want to emulate the fantasies of men, even if this includes demeaning other women, as well as themselves in the process, in the fight to fit in and feel equal.
It is no secret in the hip-hop industry that women who appeared in music videos could use the exposure as a means of securing other jobs such as modeling, and even some attempting to be actors and musicians themselves. So are these women in fact seizing their womanhood, or are they only helping to further the gap? I would argue for the second option. I believe quite strongly, as I’m sure Levy would agree, that many of these women have very few alternatives, leading to hundreds of women willing to do close to anything for a few dollars. The fact that this is not only deemed acceptable by such a large number of women, as well as the industry as a whole, could be considered the definition of raunch culture in our society today. But there are no doubt women behind the scenes as members of the crew, or even employees of the distributing company over the shoot. So is it fair to judge those in front of the camera for only attempting to make it where those behind the scenes are in terms of success? For sure, I am not the one to answer that question. But I believe Levy would surmise that those behind the scenes are no less guilty of the chauvinistic tendencies that men are constantly blamed for.
As a whole, I think Levy would be disgusted but not surprised. This only gives credit to her views on raunch culture today, and what is acceptable, as well as the large degree as to which this new cultural shift only serves to alienate women even further.