Images of Women

Gina Lagrotteria

February 27, 2015

Blog Post #5

Women in Music Videos & Advertisements

This week in class we discussed the images of women that are portrayed in music videos and advertisements. The videos of the way women present themselves over the years in music videos have changed. Music Videos are now basically pornography’s rather than normal music videos. In class we watched music videos that toke place in different generations.

The first video that we watched was “Girls, Girls,Girls “ by the Motley Crew. This video was made in the year of 1987. In this video, it shows bikers going to a strip club and watching the strippers dance. Obviously the strippers are dancing in a sexual way but the moves that they do in the video, I would not consider what is todays sexual moves. They did have skimpy clothes on though, but were more covered in areas that you usually do not find in music videos today. The men were throwing dollar bills at the women as they danced on the pole. Even though this is disturbing to see women act and portray themselves in such a degrading way, Comparing with the music videos that come out now that this is not considered as bad. At the time period were it toke place, it was probably a very controversial music video as women were dancing on the pole and were not wearing clothes in some places that they used to.

One of the other videos that we watched was “Tip Drill “ by Nelly. This video actually made me uncomfortable to watch and the only thing I could think about while watching this video was why would girls even want to show themselves in this way. This was not a music video, it was a pornography. In this video, you see girls showing themselves in a highly sexualized way, they were all barely clothed and at some points they were not even clothed at all as there was boobs and ass shown. You also see girls rubbing up against one another. Seeing this video was a huge difference in the change of music video as compared to the one produced by the Motley Crew in 1987.

Seeing these videos makes me wonder, why do these girls show themselves in this way? Is it because they want to show their “power” or is it because the advisement is controlling them. I do not know how anyone could ever want to show herself in such a sexual manor. These videos are so easy to access these days because of technology. It is not like no one is going to see these videos; you can have these videos at the click of a button.

Pornography is a huge part of today’s society. In the reading “ Women, Pop Music and Pornography” by Meredith Levande she states, “ Pornographic images are everywhere, but they did not magically appear. They are becoming increasingly corporate and are part of larger business model. From the auto industry to wireless services to hotel accommodations, pornographic imagery has crept into the mainstream because it is owned by everyday companies”. When you have these well known companies , portraying girls in sexual ways to promote their company it does not help the view and images of women as a whole. This week my class was assigned a homework assignment to find pictures of women that are used in advertisement to promote a product in a sexual or offensive way and tweet it with the hash tag not buying it( #NotBuyingIt) . By doing this ,we want people to understand that showing women in this such a way is not going to make your product well known, companies need to find other ways than using a girls body to promote their business.

I am astonished of how the images and videos of women are now days. I do not even want to think of how women are going to be seen in 10 years, is it going to be normal to see all body parts? I feel like seeing women portraying themselves in such a way, is almost like showing they do not respect themselves and how can someone respect you, if you do not respect yourself.