I was just reading the experiment that we were assigned to read and write on, and I got to the part where “BE” is sharing her opinion on strippers and “tip drills”. What I got from what she was saying is that women who strip in order to better their lives can be respected and those women who just strip to make a quick buck cannot be respected. However; the way I look at it is if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, well then I most certainly is a duck. So just because a woman may be stripping to put herself through college, she is still a stripper. She is basically selling her body not necessarily for sex but nonetheless selling it. I don’t want to sound as though I am judging those who do those sorts of things to get by, but there are other ways to make money. I also think that all women should be respected no matter what their job is. This may sound contradictory, but the fact is that at the end of the day or night that woman is still a woman. I do not agree with or respect the job that she has, but she should still be respected as a person.
I know that we have all noticed the African-American obsession with all things Anglo (this is a generalization; I know not all Afro-Americans are). So therefore in music videos who do we mostly see being glorified by the rapper? Usually a light skinned girl with long flowing hair, or a girl with very distinct exotic features. Well this would lead one to possibly believe that the lighter you are the more beauty you possess and the better you are treated. The girls who are participating in the “rap session” make it clear that it doesn’t matter what shade a woman is, she could be as dark as 11:59pm or she could be light and bright, as long as she is a black woman gyrating her hips for a group of men in a music video she is not going to be respected and she will inevitably be treated as a “tip drill” even if she is not.
After reading a little bit more I came to the realization that, I do in fact identify with the Hip-Hop culture just as the girls in the session do. Does that make me guilty by association for entertaining the degrading ignorance that is constantly being shown on my television screen or blasted through the head phones on my phone? Am I partly responsible for the degradation of my sisters because I support the industry by buying, downloading, and dancing to the music that is blatantly referring to all women as female dogs and hoes? I think I do have a little bit of ownership in the problem, actually we all do. Well those of us who listen to and identify with the culture (Hip-Hop) do anyways. If we as women, not just Black women, but women of all different races came together and decided to boycott this type of music and treatment of women we could severely impact the Hip-Hop industry and maybe change things for the better. May be one day women will not be seen as objects for men to ogle or whatever they do, but we need to start being proactive about it now. For most of us it would be really hard to stop listening to Lil’ Wayne or Gucci, but as someone great once said, every journey begins with just one step. -Mary Williams
No comments:
Post a Comment