Sexism

In the words of MC Vagina:

"It isn't sexist because I'm saying it in song, now shut up and take off your thong"

Before I begin I realise that Chester has already blogged on this topic, but you know, what the hell I'll do it as well.

I was watching some channel V as I do occasionally because it, unlike MTV actually plays music occasionally. Or so I thought. I began watching the 100 hottest or something like that and this song came on, that was about as subtle as a rock being thrown at someone in a wheelchair.

Some buff guy was dancing around in front of his 'pimpin' cars, drinking some product placement wine, talking on his Iphone (which was zoomed in on) and surrounded by what some might refer to as "Skanky Booty Hoes".

I don't care if this guy writes his music and gets product placements, buys pimpin cars and seems to be living the high life. My problem with this style of video is the degradation of women. I mean, this guy had three women hanging off of him as if they were objects. Sure this may seem harmless as my peers and I seem to be able to take this with a grain of salt and know that it is ridiculous.

But this music was in the top 100 which means someone likes it, and someone must identify with the image being portrayed in the clip. For males this means they aspire to be a mysoginist douche bag and for girls it means they want to be brainless, skanks. Neither of which are particularly admirable.

But maybe I am overeacting, maybe this sort of thing has no effect on anybody. And I mean, I'm not trying to write off a certain genre of music, as you may have figured out that I am talking about hip hop music in general. I do realise that hip hop music is not all like this, as it started as the voice of the disenfranchised black man and produced seminal artists like Tupac etc.

And hip hop is not the only genre of music to contain sexist elements, infact I'm sure you could find it in every single genre. Bands like ACDC sing about effectively the exact same thing. I guess my problem is that these videos seem to lack any sense of subtelty, and just come across as insulting and silly.

But maybe that is just me.