Blog 6

In my recent Race, Gender, and the Media class, we discussed how race and gender are portrayed in music videos. On my own, I decided to research a few music videos of my own to discuss. The first music video I found was a popular song played on the radio entitled Sex Room by Ludacris. In the music video women are portrayed as sex objects. Of course this is not a surprise for a song called Sex Room, but I must bring something to your attention. Women are allowing this to happen to them, not only are these women defiling their good name to be in a dirty video, but there's also another point I must make here: The women are African American. I must call to attention that African American girls that I know have always had a problem with how they are depicted in society, yet here they are in a rap video discussing how these men want to use these women.

But Sex Room is not the first and only video to depict African American women like this, there's also another video by Nelly entitled "Tip Drill." African American women in this video are partially nude and dancing in front of men singing about how they want a "tip drill." Many would argue that these women decided to be in the videos themselves, but I only wonder do they have respect for themselves outside of doing dirty music videos?

Our world is full of music that objectifies women, whether it be sexually or violently. I only have a problem with this, because our youth is listening to this and they are the future, as we were the future years ago. When they learn to objectify women from rappers and other people they look up to, they will objectify women throughout their lives and this will be an ongoing problem throughout time.