Can you imagine living in a world in which your beauty is not seen as beauty at all? Many black women wake up to this reality every morning. Living the life of an African American female is difficult because you do not fit into the Eurocentric paradigm in which you are forced to be reminded of daily. Media shows us as a people who we are and how we are supposed to be. Media affects black women in a negative way because it portrays black women in a negative way. Black women have to face the effects of being over-sexualized through media. As a result of African American women being over-sexualized and used for only their appearances, they feel obligated to focus on their appearance and sexuality. This is because they are shown through media that "their bodies are public domain, belonging less to themselves and more to others" (Gordon 245). Rap videos, in particular, sexualize African American females frequently. A study was conducted to determine if there was a link between exposure to these types of videos and unsafe sex, drug and alcohol use, and violent behavior in African American adolescent females. According to the results, adolescents who had more exposure to these types of videos, were more likely to have hit a teacher, have been arrested, multiple sexual partners, used drugs, consumed alcohol, and/or have acquired a new sexually transmitted disease (Wingwood, DiClemente, Bernhardt, Harrington, Davies, Robillard, Hook 437). Exposure to the Eurocentric paradigm as a child affects the self-image of many African American adolescent females. Dr. Kenneth Clark conducted a study to determine what young black females ages four and five consider attractive. ABC news reports that when given a black doll and an identical white doll, ... ... middle of paper ... .... Essence, 8 Feb. 2014. Web. 23 Mar. 2014. "What Dolls Can Tell Us About Race in America." ABC News. ABC News Network, 11 Oct. 2006. Web. 23 Mar. 2014. Bond, Beverly. Mega Consumer Goods. "Imagine A Future: My Black Is Beautiful" 22 Apr. 2013. Web. 23 Mar. 2014 Comstock, George A., and Erica Scharrer. Media and the American child. Burlington, MA: Elsevier, 2007. Print. Gordon, Maya. "Media contributions to african american girls' focus on beauty and appearance: exploring the consequences of sexual objectification." Psychology of Women Quarterly 32.3 (2008): 245-256. ERIC. Web. 18 Sept. 2011. Wingood, G. M., R. J. DiClemente, J. M. Bernhardt, K. Harrington, S. L. Davies, A. Robillard, and E. W. Hook. "A Prospective Study Of Exposure To Rap Music Videos And African American Female Adolescents' Health." American Journal of Public Health 93.3 (2003): 437-439. Print.
In an excerpt from Janell Hobson’s “Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture” Hobson argues that the “image of black women’s bodies in culture are distorted in a way resembling the morphing of a person’s figure in a carnival mirror,” a term she coins as “un-mirroring.” She continues this metaphor by saying black women artists must “fight against this process by challenging dominant culture’s representation of black women’s bodies as being grotesque and changing the discourse to being one of beauty.” One may argue that black women are too diverse to be represented by one image, rather that they should fight to be regarded as individuals devoid of stereotypes and negative historical connotations. Stereotypes, which are too broad to be accurate, have negatively affected the image of the black female body in culture. To change the trajectory of this idea in the future, the discussion must be aimed towards persuading society that stereotypes are superficial judgments, and that black women should be regarded as a diverse group of individuals, not individual elements of a stereotype.
There are many, many forces — physical, historical, cultural, and political — that shape and constrict the life chances of black males in the U.S. Some of these are longstanding legacies that may take generations to shift. But in other ways, the social, economic, and symbolic place of African-American men and boys is recreated and reinforced every day. In particular, public perceptions and attitudes toward black males not only help to create barriers to advancement within this society, but also make that position seem natural or inevitable. Among the most important mechanisms for maintaining (or changing) these perceptions are the mass media with their significant power to shape popular ideas and attitudes.
“She ain’t nuttin but a hoochie mama…Smackin’ on your lips, put your hands on your hips…She ain’t nuttin but a hoochie mama…Oh I love those big brown eyes and the way you shake your thighs, acting like you’re so damn cute...” Rap music with lyrics like this play on the radio and in home stereos every day. Rap music pounds messages of sex and violence into the minds of young adults leaving behind their sexist and repetitive influential messages. Music has a very powerful influence on our emotions, moods, and behavior. Rap music influences teenagers negatively by increasing violent attitudes and promoting sexual aggression against women.
Oppression disguises itself in various spheres, including Black womanhood. This classification includes societal pressures of Black women to conform to Eurocentric values, such as in beauty, gender, and families. The standard of European beauty is imposed on Black women, in which they feel subjected
This article is titled “Rap music is harmful to African American communities” and is written by E. Faye Williams. Williams is a chairwoman of the National Congress of Black Women (NCBW). The national congress of black women is a non-profit organization dedicated to the educational, political, economic, and cultural development of African American women and their families. Williams’s article “Rap music is harmful to African American communities” makes her qualified and a credible source to be writing on this question: If rap music and other media is harming the African American community? In her article, she states her side of the argument of how rap music and media are indeed harming the African American community, using the context, and reasoning,
The concept of whiteness being the ideal standard for physical appearances is ingrained into every girl’s brain through dolls given during early childhood due their parents’ preconceived notions that they desire the same things they did (Morrison 20).
Media is all around us from television to billboards, making it difficult not to be influence by media in one way or another. Unfortunately, media has influence women to believe that in order for women to be considered beautiful, they must for fill the characteristics of what media considers beautiful. Hurting women both psychologically and physically.
Oswald, Janelle. “Is Rap Turning Girls into Ho’s?” The Black Book: A Custom Publication. 3rd ed. Ed. Sam Pierstorff. Modesto: Quercus Review Press, 2012. 171-175.
The ideal female beauty in American culture is predominately white (Bankhead & Johnson, 2014). Throughout U.S history, women’s mainstream beauty ideal has been historically based on white standards such as having blonde hair, blue eyes, fair skin, a thin ideal body, straight hair, and thin lips (West, 1995; Yamamiya, Cash, Melynk, Posavac, & Posavac, 2005; Leslie, 1995). Therefore, the features of African American women tend to be viewed as undesirable and unattractive compared to the European standards of beauty (Awad, Norwood, Taylor, Martinez, McClain, Jones, Holman, & Hilliard, 2014). According to Ashe (1995), “African beauty, body and hair have been racialized, with slim/”keen” European features being the accepted standard of beauty since enslaved Africans was forcefully brought to the Americas.” The physical characteristics of Black women such as having broad noses, brown skin, full lips, large buttocks and course hair has been looked down upon throughout United States history (Byrd & Tharps, 2001). In effect, the standard of beauty of European features that were forced on slaves are internalized and currently seen in the standard of beauty of African Americans (A.A) (Chapman, 2007). These standards include African Americans perceiving light-skinned as being more favorable than dark-skinned (Maddox & Gray, 2002; Perdue, Young, Balam,
In a article “Rap Music's Psychological Effects”, written by Suite 101, studies were conducted to assess how listening to hip hop effected teenagers and young adults, and found that overall, that listening to rap music does not cause aggressive or deviant behavior. Instead hip-hop music did cause violent actions, particularly abuse against women. Additionally, those who watched either violent or non-violent hip-hop videos were more inclined to express materialistic attitudes and favors, potentially acquiring possessions through crime. Studies also found th...
The media affects the way people view all different races as well, not only gender. One passage that stood out was when Omi exclaimed, “all racial minorities were represented as “less than human.”In the 1930 's African and white children were split into different schools. In this era white Americans disfavored against African-Americans because they did not have the same skin color. For this reason, African-Americans endured mistreatment and misunderstanding. This primarily affected African-American children because their education system was different from the white children. Negro schools had many restrictions such as reading being restricted and discarded to the libraries of the white community. Based on the attention to this advertisement through the view of the race, I read that African-American children were falsely described in the 1930’s because they lack a proper education system and they were not socially equal. Education affected the child’s self-esteem and self-worth “Education of the Negro Child” about sixty-five percent of African-American children lived life classified as retarded. Those children had trouble developing self-esteem and self-worth because the society around them saw them as uneducated and unintelligent. The concept of “veneer” means to cover something to improve its appearance. The advertisement implied that the African-American children showed excitement when one child covers
In this same article, Gina M. Wingwood, assistant professor in the rollins schools of public health, found that teenage girls who listen to and watch rap videos frequently- more than 14 hours a week- were three times more likely to hit a teacher and more than 2.5 times as likely to have been arrested than girls who aren't such devoted rap fans. The 522 adolescent African American women followed in the year-long study also were twice as likely to have multiple sex partners and at least 1.5 times more likely to get a sexually transmitted disease, drink, and use drugs” Girl's who are listening to this kind of music, are more likely to do things like hit a teacher, and more likely to have multiple sex partners. In another article, “Degrading Songs Hurt Women” the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette found that the Rand Corporation released a study in August 2006 which shows “that the more often teens listen to sexually degrading songs - marked by obscenities and stereotypes of women as sex objects and men as sexual predators - the likelier they are to have sex at an
The effects of objectifying women in music videos are entirely negative. Women grow up with the idea that they should always seek to attain a men’s attention. Hip-hop music videos do not represent females as the human beings that they really are. This creates an inequality o...
McWhorter, John. “Rap Music Harms the Black Community.”Popular Culture. Ed. John Woodward. Farmington Hills, MI: Thompson Gale, 2005. 53-59.
This was the conversation that occurred between an interviewer and a child of African American descent during the Clark Doll Experiment in 1939. In this experiment, two dolls were placed in front of multiple African American children; one doll was black while the other was white. These children were asked numerous questions including: “Which doll is the ugly doll?”, “Which doll is the pretty doll?”, “Which doll is the nice doll?”, etc. These children were given the task of determining, essentially, which doll was the most beautiful and therefore acceptable. The experiment yielded very shocking results. Majority of the children who were asked these questions tended to favor the white doll, claiming that it was both prettier and nicer because it was lighter. This experiment was conducted again in 2009 and yielded the same results.