Blog Post 8

Hannah Dickie

3/27/15

Blog post 8

Male Dominated Industry

            This week in class we talked about the article “Check on It” by Aisha Durham. In this article she discusses how women artists in the hip hop music industry don’t really have a large say in how their music videos and their songs are created. The music industry is dominated by male directors and producers who are going to want to see women as a sexual object. They are going to have women wearing barley nothing dancing around well their male counterparts are seen as strong and powerful. However I do think that in some cases women are able to get the message they want out because of maybe more the lyrics. If the audience ignores the music video in most cases and just listens to lyrics closely there more than likely is a message in their about women. Or in interviews sometimes they say things about women to send a message or even in the way they act and present themselves. Such as Beyoncé she can be seen as a women with a larger shape in some areas and she is still extremely confident in herself. Because of this younger women are realizing its okay to look how we do even if we aren’t super skinny or don’t have a large butt. Beyoncé is helping other younger women gain the self confidence that she has.    It’s hard sometimes form women to get their music videos to send out the message they want especially now because in this society sex sells, so they will do whatever needed to make the most profit. In some cases women are able to get the message out they want to but then that song might never be played on the radio. Which is similar to songs about politics which we discusses in class. The media never plays songs about politics or that talk about a serious controversial message. I don’t really know why they don’t because in class we discussed some of the artists who have made songs about politics and to be honest I had never really heard of any of them. Maybe the media doesn’t want us to hear them because it will create a new idea within some of us and their afraid of what might happen if it does. Or maybe they don’t want to be categorized to support a specific side or group of people because then they will lose either the opposing side or people who don’t agree with that as listeners and in the end lose money. My guess is that it’s the second one because most people in the media are concerned with how much money they are making and they won’t really do anything to decrease the amount. The same goes for singers. They won’t sing about or discuss in most cases what their political views or what groups they support because they don’t want to lose the other sides fan base. If they keep their ideas quiet and to themselves remaining neutral then they can keep all sides of their fan base. Maybe in the future different artists that emerge will be more comfortable voicing their opinions through song. There are a few people now who voice their opinions but there needs to be more especially more women who are able to empower other women.