Imperious Entertainment

Although rap music is generally a male dominated arena, rap music videos reign supreme with women. The formula for a popular video, besides the flashy cars and expensive bottles of liquor, is a surplus of near naked women. Generally these women are beautiful, with great bodies, adorned in expensive clothes. A friend of mine asked me the other day, does anyone care about the way music videos make women feel?

Past the image problems with video women, the treatment of said women also hurts the everyday woman. Video women are generally not respected in videos. They get liquor poured on them, dollars thrown on them. Their asses are smacked. Yet they seem to enjoy it. And by behaving in such manners, they receive the attention from the rapper. Young girls and women look at such behavior and many believe that acting like that is okay. They go to Miami for memorial day weekend, wearing booty shorts, and love the attention they get from men. The men yell at them, even touch them, and the woman smiles to herself, thinking “good job shorts”. The men thus continue to behave in such manners as the rapper because he sees when the rapper does it, he gets a flock of women. Why not act in the same way?

Across the world people learn about black women through music videos. This is where we appear the most in the media. This of course is a major problem for people who have little to no contact with African American women. Currently, I am living in Madrid, Spain. My roommate is a 26-year-old male from Turkey. He has never been around an African American woman before me. And because of that, he is very naïve about many things. He is a sweetheart, definitely not racist. But the only time he ever saw a black woman was in a music video. A few weeks ago the two of us went to a club in downtown Madrid. The club only played heavy club and disco music and we had a great time dancing the night away. When I first started dancing, he said to me in his broken English, “You dance like rap video girl”.

I looked at him. His eyes were sincere. I knew he meant no harm. I just smiled. But video girl? I mean, I wasn’t “dropping it like its hott” or anything. I was simply grooving to the beat. Yet to him I was an African American woman dancing to a beat, so he associated me with a video vixen. Not cool. But in places such as Turkey, and even Spain where there is only a small population of African American women, residents learn about us through videos and believe that we all behave in such ways.

Comments (3)

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written by Jackrabbit Jenkins , September 11, 2007

It's horrible been young girls actually aspire to be these video vixens we criticize. I'm confident this will soon pass and the youth will realize their social worth. I dream of a day where African-Americans are not associated with pop-culture entertainers but rather the figures that demonstrate our great intellect and creativity. "You dance like rap video girl." Fuck that. "You write like educated black girl."

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written by Esha , September 19, 2007

It's a sad sad thing...but what African American girls are in videos, very few, they are always latina or mixed

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written by zamaih , October 03, 2007

Part of the problem is everyone's current obsession with fame and being famous, partly caused by the current reality television craze and perpetuated by websites like myspace and facebook. These days (more than ever) people (esp women) are addicted to attention, fame, money, and beauty because our media shows them images of famous people on shows like "cribs." Almost every girl I know has been in a video. Some want to be famous, but I think some just like hearing people say "did you see so and so in that video?" Or being in a video validates the fact that they look good because most people equate video vixens with beauty. I agree, the women do have the power and need to pick and choose the videos they agree to be in and stop being so thirsty for money that they can only rely on their looks to make a living. Your looks will fade and that $125 you made on the video will last one week! I don't have a problem with all music videos, just most of them. But the bottom line is if you're being exploited, you shouldn't do it, it shows a lack of self respect for yourself.

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