Empowerment/ Objectification in the Music Industry
When Miley Cyrus came in on a wrecking ball almost ten years ago, people were shaken. In her previous music video, Cyrus had been dressed in a skimpy, white ensemble, worlds apart from the quirky Hannah Montana she used to be. Next time she’ll be naked, I thought to myself. And she was.
Nowadays, it seems like nudity is expected and music can only exist if it’s accompanied by someone’s bare ass. This assumption is once again confirmed when I scroll through the endless colons of thumbnails on YouTube’s music page. As my cursor hovers above the videos, racy women start dancing as if on command.
The song I wanted to hear isn’t on display, so I type it into the search bar. An ad pops up. “Are you suffering from a vaginal yeast infection,” I swiftly turn down the volume and click on “skip.” Sometimes it seems like the whole world is a sly marketing campaign targeted at women.
I turn the volume up again. “I am woman hear me roar,” Helen Reddy belts out. “It’s a general empowerment song about feeling good about yourself,” the singer told an Australian daily back in 2003.
But the “Up Next” panel presents a different kind of empowerment. Megan Thee Stallion, Cardi B, Doja Cat, Saweetie. These are the women that we look up to today when the camera is angled from below, enabling the perfect booty shot.
As a feminist, I feel conflicted. Sure, I enjoy the music, but I wonder why their videos are always this explicit. And why we, as a society, have normalized this type of content. Should this be normal? I have seen so much of Cardi B’s ass that I would notice if one of her birthmarks grew into a malignant melanoma.
When I was younger, I would secretly watch Nikki Minaj's music videos on my mom’s phone. Video clips that now seem almost modest, but still YouTube would always ask me to verify my age. Yet since I have surpassed this age barrier, I’ve never again been asked, and I have even seen “WAP”...
This development surprises me. It’s like twerking, which with time has become a casual move in most nightclubs. Girls mindlessly push their butts into the crotches of strangers as if it’s just another version of the sprinkler.
But is this a bad development? The type of art that these popular musicians create conveys the comfort women should feel when it comes to their bodies.
Over the past centuries, female anatomy has never truly belonged to women. Our bodies have always been objectified, sexualized, and claimed by others. So the reappropriation of the female body is in a way analogous to female empowerment.
Still, do we need to be naked to feel free?
When model Emily Ratajkowski joined the music video for “Blurred Lines,” she was told her part would be “empowering.” The three artists—Robin Thicke, rapper TI, and Pharrell Williams—were surrounded by beautiful models who were instructed to ignore the men or even mock them, shifting the power dynamic.
Instead, Thicke placed a non-consensual hand on Ratajkowski’s breast. “With that one gesture, Robin Thicke had reminded everyone on set that we women weren’t actually in charge,” Ratajkowski told People magazine.
The incident marks the complexity of female nudity in the music industry. How much power do female musicians really have over their bodies? Can their scanty outfits and risqué dance moves be seen as empowerment? As Ratajkowski phrased it, female nudity remains “a double-edged sword.”
