The over-sexualization of women in the music industry
I like a lot of music. From pop to musical to country to anything-you-name-i’ll-probably-like-it. Lately, I’ve been listening to more mainstream artists like Sabrina Carpenter Tate McRae, and I think their songs are pretty good. Then I watch the music video and I just see them groping their bodies and blurring the line between objectifying their bodies and “loving” yourself-to the point that the video doesn’t match what they’re singing about.
There’s nothing wrong with being confident in your body, but seeing their audiences of adolescents or even tweens, it’s pretty frightsome that their icons are indirectly telling them that to get attention you need to sexualize yourself.
These songs may seem harmless, but they all share the same message: it’s okay to treat women like objects, in fact they want to be treated like this.
I think women empowerment and wearing a bikini on camera and calling it girl power are two very different things. But they get muddled all the time because of female singers whose whole songs center around being used.
Some artists use songs as a means to vent out their problems and turn their past trauma into an abstract piece of art. I am not against this. I am, however, against female singers monetizing off of their bodies, and completely disregarding the fact that you need singing skills to make a song.
Let me ask you a question. If Ice Spice wasn’t zooming in on her butt in each music video, do you think she would still have 159 million views on Youtube?
Mainstream artists (and probably their managers too) are deaf to all the noise they’re pushing onto the current generation of adolescents.
I mean why should they bother? They’re just a bunch of kids anyway. They should just stop listening to the song. While these are sound arguments, they’re unrealistic.
Firstly, adolescents make up a large part of listeners in the music industry. Managers and singers alike who want to make the big bucks won’t push up such a large demographic, the fewer listeners, the fewer bank.
Singers and their subject of choice aren’t the sole problem. We are too. Why are we perpetuating songs that predate women’s worth? What does this literally give us? Nothing! We gain absolutely nothing from listening and affirming to songs that tell us a women’s worth is how big her ass or breasts are.
Maybe (though I’m not very convinced) female artists want to stand against the stereotype that they are just sex toys and without autonomy. Maybe by shaking ass on video or singing about how they’re sex addicts they think they can reclaim their power. Taking these points at their highest remark, their impact on female empowerment or even baseline human decency is not strong enough to make a lasting change.
I think the music industry needs a reality. Quick, or else they risk losing millions of followers.
