Alternative Representations in Hip Hop

Christina Aguilera - Can't Hold Us Down



This music video is very contraversial in the way that women are represented in the Hip Hop genre.

Christina Aguilera has often been critisiced of her revealing dress sense, before she changed her look completely for the music video "Beautiful". In this text, her image is that of someone stereotypically nicknamed "white trash". She is shown in shorts, wearing all pink, which suggests there is still supposed to be an element of innocence in her character in this music video.

Even the title gives indications of a rebellious and revolutionary-style music video. "Can't Hold Us Down" tells the viewers, even before they view the text, that this is something to repell those who create pressure; in this case, men. The text also features mainly black males, who are stereotypically seen as the most dominant, dangerous and violent men who create the most problems. Even though Christina Aguilera is white and middle-classed, she chose to dress like an ethnic minority figure to express her view that it is not important what race they are, but that they are fighting together against equality.

Clearly this text shows an alternative representation of women in the Hip Hop genre, compared to stereotypical ones we often see in rap songs, featuring women hardly dressed, dancing around dominant males and phallic symbols. This text contains connotations that are more deeply rooted around feminism and post-feminism rather than morality. The lyrics "when a female fires back, suddenly big-talker don't know how to act" shapes the meaning of the music video to the viewer. The singer questions this idea of feminism that is supposed to have created equality in everyday life, yet considerable differences still exist within the two genres that don't allow equality to prevail.

Mainly in the Hip Hop genre, the dominant representation of men are that they seem quite relaxed and don't have to move much to be pleasured by his women. Usually using phallic symbols to express his power and control over these women, dominant males would show off their power with the most expensive cars, clothing and jewellery. Whereas in this music video, we see the alternative representation of men:

Here is a screenshot of the scene where the males are breakdancing. This whole idea of dancing to show themselves off almost seems a desperation to re-gain power. The text reflects the rise in female power against males who, according to this music video, really and truly don't have any power but refuse to admit so. Therefore, it supports the idea that we are still living in a patriarchal society, even though male mysogyny has decreased.

However, in a way, the text is trying to change the views of the viewer by showing them that it is the representation of men that creates the patriarchal society, and not the men themselves. The scene where Lil Kim enters the scene in her tight revealing outfit, is where it becomes clear what the main focus of the clip is:

Even though she is dressed in the stereotypically subordinate female image, her words explain, using examples, the inequality that still exists today. Yet she makes it clear that it is not the men's actions that lead to this being the case, but the way they are still represented as angels/heroes. "When a guy have 3 girls, then he's the man. He can either give her some head of sex her off, but if the girl do the same then she's a whore" - the text connotes that the only reason equality still exists today is because men are still given this freedom of being able to sexually please many women and be promiscuous without consequence, but women are seen to be "whores" if they do the same, because of this never-ending mysogynistic view towards women in society.

"But the table's about to turn" and "You can't hold me down, i got to keep on moving" - give indications of feminist behaviour on the rapper's part. These lyrics signify that we have not yet reached total feminism and that the viewers should bear in mind that women's power is still rising today. In a way, Christina Aguilera tries to promote women's power and allow women to become more rebellious and violent towards men in society, because of the idea of feminism being so revolutionary.

Even the lyrics "you must talk so big to make up for smaller things":

The singer's hand gestures as she says this line are very sexual. Yet she is using this phallic symbol as a way to express the meaning behind what she is saying. She is trying to say that males try to be dominant by pretending they have big penises, but talk in a mysogynistic manner to women in order to make up for a size that they haven't achieved.

Therefore, alternative representations do exist of females and males in the Hip Hop genre. However, to be an alternative representation, the stereotypical roles must be switched from the males being dominant to subordinate, and from the females being subordinate to dominant. Although this is an unusual change, it seems normal for the general public as we are used to the rise in female power over the years. But to go as far as suggesting that society naturally subordinates men would be incorrect. The text signifies the hatred some women have for mysogynistic men in particular, therefore creating an alternate mysogyny coming from the female point-of-view. This has slowly began to shape society, that instead of equality, we are slowly beginnning to accept the fact that males should be subordinated and females dominant.

Post-Feminism and Popular Culture

The link to Angela McRobbie's paper on Post-Feminism and Popular Culture:

http://weblearn.ox.ac.uk/site/human/women/students/biblio/historiog/McRobbie%20-%20postfeminism.pdf

Bridget Jones' Diary



"My argument is that post-feminism positively draws on and invokes feminism as that which can be taken into account, to suggest that equality is achieved..."

"This is a movement detectable across popular culture, a site where “power … is remade at various junctures within everyday life"

"the shrill championing of young women as a “metaphor for social change” on the pages of the right wing press in the UK, in particular the Daily Mail."

Wonderbra - Eva Herzigova



"The Wonderbra advert showing the model Eva Herzigova looking down admiringly at her substantial cleavage enhanced by the lacy pyrotechnics of the Wonderbra, was through the mid-1990s positioned in major high street locations in the UK on full size billboards."

"The composition of the image had such a textbook “sexist ad” dimension that one could be forgiven for supposing some familiarity with both cultural studies and with feministcritiques of advertising (Judith Williamson 1987)."

"It was, in a sense, taking feminism into account by showing it to be a thing of the past, by provocatively “enacting sexism” while at the same time playing with those debates in film theory about women as the object of the gaze (Laura Mulvey 1975) and even with female desire (Rosalind Coward 1984;Teresa de Lauretis 1988)."

Claudia Schiffer Car Ad



"This advert appears to suggest that yes, this is a self-consciously “sexist ad,” feminist critiques of it are deliberately evoked."

"Feminism is “taken into account,” but only to be shown to be no longer necessary. Why? Because there is no exploitation here, there is nothing remotely naıve about this striptease. She seems to be doing it out of choice, and for her own enjoyment; the advert works on the basis of its audience knowing Claudia to be one of the world’s most famous and highly paid supermodels."

"Once again, the shadow of disapproval is introduced (the striptease as site of female exploitation), only instantly to be dismissed as belonging to the past, to a time when feminists used to object to such imagery. "

Playboy magazine criticism

Here is an article from Journal of the History of Sexuality (May 1, 2008), which criticises Playboy's treatment of post-feminist women as being mysogynistic and disrespectful.

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-179195168.html

"If we turn attention to some of the participatory dynamics in leisure and everyday
life which see young women endorse (or else refuse to condemn) the ironic normalisation of pornography, where they indicate their approval of and desire to be pin up girls for the centrefolds of the soft porn “lad mags"

"we are witness to a hyper-culture of commercial sexuality, one aspect of which is the repudiation of a feminism invoked only to be summarily dismissed (see also Rosalind Gill 2003)"

Chick Lit



"scenarios and dilemmas facing the young women characters in the narratives of contemporary popular culture (especially so-called chick lit)."

"Individuals must now choose the kind of life they want to live. Girls must have a lifeplan. They must become more reflexive in regard to every aspect of their lives, from making the right choice in marriage, to taking responsibility for their own working lives,and not being dependent on a job for life or on the stable and reliable operations of a large-scale bureaucracy which in the past would have allocated its employees specific,and possibly unchanging, roles."

The Four "Clarifying Concepts"

1. Post-feminism as backlash to feminism:

The new stage of equality between men and women, moving on from the old gender war.

2. Post-feminism as a colloquialism:

The idea that, although the movement has been contraversial, it is seen in society by the publicity of its new era.

3. The ambiguity of the prefix “post”:

Feminism has ended and we have ultimately reached equality.

4. A more positive look at post-feminism:

Looking at feminism as no longer a difficult era that we must overcome, but now as a completed era that we must be proud of.