Patricia Hill Collin’s chapter, Why Black Sexual Politics? depicted black’s sexuality in the media. It was interesting to hear what Collin’s thought about black music stars such as Destiny’s Child and the infamous JLO. I remember listening to these songs as a child and did not even notice that black artists wrote them. It was not until I was much older that I noticed they were black. Even when I did notice they were black female artists, I did not notice the differences in their music videos from a Britney Spear’s music video. Both to me seemed extremely undermining women and showing them as sexual objects for men to want to possess and women to want to be. After reading Collin’s article, I youtubed Destiny Child’s Survior music video and right away noticed exactly what Collins was referring to. I’ll attach the video, but I noticed how Beyonce is crawling on the beach like an animal and how all three of the girls are wearing ripped clothing as if they were Amazon women. They then continued to behave in an animalistic way, in addition to changing in to revealing clothing of animal prints. It was interesting to see how they were connected to animalistic characteristics and were even dressed that way too. When Collins talked about The Maury Show, The Montel Williams Show and Jerry Springer, I was able to connect the stereotypical “animalistic” trait of the black race to the people on these shows. Collins described the black women as not knowing who their baby’s father was because she was so sexually wild. A black man’s sexual drive was also portrayed by having the black man not be able to know who is child is because he too has so many sexual partners. The worst part of these portrayals of the black race is that white people are watching it and taking it as true.
Whitney,
ReplyDeleteYou bring up a brilliant point that I wished you would have elaborate it more on. But, your connection about how, especially in our generation, how white female artists like Britney Spear and Christiana Aguilera are just as sexually objectified as women of color artists like Destiny Child and JLo. Growing up with all of these artists, they all produced videos that show women as sexually promiscuous. Therefore,it bring the race into this question. Are women of color held on a different standard than white women on how they can express their sexuality. Why is it that women are color are attached with terms like "animalistic" while white women are label with more lenient that they are just going through a miss fall in their character. As I read in my education class that black students are normally "adultified" meaning that their actions are held in a higher view and evaluated in more attack of their character, this is exactly what is presented in Collin's article and your post. Here is to show that, race is a factor in women's identity that greater suppress them.