The Objectification Of Women In Music Videos

1834 Words4 Pages

Most generations have been influenced by a trend of music that inspires them to dress, behave, and talk in a certain way. There are people who have the special talent of making others relate to their emotions, thoughts, or ideas by creating music. In current society most artists decide to create videos to make their lyrics visual for their listeners and to earn more profit. The negative thing about the creation of music videos is the way in which females are stereotyped. In a lot of music videos, especially hip-hop/rap, females are portrayed in a negative way, which causes a harmful influence on the people who view them.
The most common theme in hip-hop music videos is the objectification of females. Women are portrayed as sexual objects throughout the videos. In some videos they are seen as a type of reward or trophy for the male. Other times they are seen holding money to gain the attention of men or are even portrayed as slaves willing to do anything to please the men in the videos. According to Catherine MacKinnon, “Objectification involves treating a person, someone with humanity, as an object of merely instrumental worth, and consequently reducing this person to the status of an object for use” (1989). Her point relates to the hip-hop music videos because the idea that they transmit is that women are only objects available at anytime for men’s use. When women are objectified men feel more “powerful” or “successful” by showing the have control over women.
The effects of objectifying women in music videos are entirely negative. Women grow up with the idea that they should always seek to attain a men’s attention. Hip-hop music videos do not represent females as the human beings that they really are. This creates an inequality o...

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...ality between males in females. They have succeeded in a lot of issues; but there is still a lot of work hat needs to be done to create a better world for women. The images we receive from the media clearly downgrade the capabilities of women by only focusing on their physical appearance. Hip-hop videos teach us that women are inferior to men, which is something many females have fought to end. The way in which women are portrayed in music videos influence the decisions we make every day. When young girls see those women dressed with provocative clothing, dancing in a seductive ways, and hear the names they are called, they create the ideology that those behaviors are acceptable. There is still a lot to do to end with the stereotypes that hip-hop videos have created, but if women unite to end this inequality and misrepresentation everything is possible.

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