It seems like these kinds of music videos are sending the wrong messages - the ideal women are Pussycat Dolls. We, humans are often highly encouraged by the media and we think that all females should be portrayed in the same way, and this gives us a misleading representation.
The media sells an image of what they deem to be the “ideal” woman”young, tall and thin with “perfect” proportions, hair, skin, and teeth. Everywhere we turn we are bombarded with magazine covers, billboards, movie posters, and the like, in which the images of the models are manipulated, in some cases, beyond recognition. The media knows this image is unattainable; we know it is unattainable. So why are these standards of beauty still being imposed upon women, the majority of which are naturally larger and older than models?
Representation refers to the construction in any media of aspects of the reality. Producers use current stereotypes to reshape these realities into current trends of the society in order to gain recognition. In music videos, they portray females into sexual objects.
Music videos nowadays have more sexual mannerisms, for example in the “Buttons” video, sexual power is derived from physical attractiveness to men as they bend down and pose seductively as if they are sexual objects for males to gaze at, which gives us the idea that it is okay, but is it really okay? In the video, the Dolls can be seen wearing semi-revealing black outfits with black boots. Then they position themselves around a pole, which is similar to pole dancing. Nicole Scherzinger also can be seen using a chair as a prop to circulate around in a flirtatious manner, performing a striptease. The floor also ignites when the Dolls crouch down suggesting the Dolls as hot, sexy, sassy females who are confident about passive female sexuality. Close up shots of body parts, touching of your own body parts, partial skin exposures are all other examples of sexual objectify. This video also uses provocative male addresses challenging Snoop to “loosen up my buttons babe”, but however the Dolls prove that they are “too hot to handle” for Snoop.
Then on the other hand there are also females in music videos who have been portrayed as “sex” slaves, as they are objectified and portrayed as only existing to serve men, as in the “P.I.M.P” video, it is evidenced by the fact that men walk women around on leashes in part of the video.
The seductively dressed young women are seen to be like "props" to the video in that they are there for background purposes. This sets a widespread sexual objectification and degradation of females. The dominant male rapper has a pivotal role and is seen as inferior to anyone else in the frame. The continuous competitiveness between the females for the attention of 50 Cent reflects a prime example of a patriarchal society. In parts of the music video the females are seen to be following the males, this almost looks as though they are in some kind of "trance" and that males have the power to control their every move. Another example of this is a shot of two women on leads being "walked" by another woman. This devalues the status of women as it portrays this situation as a “norm” in everyday life. The camera angles used in this video highlight the “male gaze”. When a female is present the use of high angle shot reveal a lot of flesh and portray the gaze of a typical man. Several close-ups are used on the females focusing more on body parts than their actual faces; this can be seen as very objectifying. This image presents females as being “vacuous” having no sign of intelligence, thought, humour and emotion.
So why are women objectified and degraded in these ways? To put it succinctly, sex sells. Provocative images of partially clothed or naked women grab the viewer’s attention. Women become sexual objects when their bodies and sexuality are linked to products. Advertisements that display sections of women’s bodies”thighs, breasts, legs, etc.”as opposed to the bodies in their entirety reinforce the erroneous notion that women are objects rather than human beings.
As I grew up watching music videos from different generations, one thing I could see was that music videos were becoming more and more sexual. Are females really just sex objects? Are females presented to please men?
Females shouldn’t be rewarded for their sexual behavior through fame and money as young people will think that it is the correct idea of how women are portrayed and they will try to do this as a way of being valuable to the society and to gain attention. Do you really think that this is going to change the world? What kind of music videos will the next generation see? Will they still be music videos or will they eventually become pornography?
Please think about the kids of the future generations, we do not want the children to think that it is okay for doing all these sexual things in order to please men. Are there really no other ways of being successful in today’s society?
Word Count: 960
by
cellmembrane416 (student)
