Consumeristic Exploitation of the Female Body in Hip Hop and Rap Culture

Representations of the female body in contemporary popular culture focuses it self around the sexual exploitation of women, particularly in the realm of hip hop and rap music. Various song lyrics and music videos within the past decade have not only objectified women, but have made them commodities to be bought with ‘dough’. Women in rap and hip-hop music become a product of consumption, upon the projection of images displaying open sexuality and the ability to be lured by large amounts of money and luxurious life styles. The image of the ‘pimp’ in popular culture is portrayed as the ideal consumer with the club being a ‘market’ of sorts and the ‘ho’ being the object of consumption. Female body parts are equated to foods and objects for sale, further immersing them in the consumer culture and making them a product of modern commodity.
Rap initially expressed views of survival, social critique and revelry to African American and Latino youth. However, over time a shift in both commercial culture and mass media led rap’s audience to grow beyond the bounds of neighborhoods and has not encompassed the national as well as international spheres. Today’s Hip Hop culture encompasses not only rap music and videos but new forms of dress, dance, language, and attitude have increasingly begun to characterize the new global culture (Phillips, et. al 253). Although both men and women continue to participate in Hip Hop culture and rap music, it is the degrading image of women that proposes an issue in modern day society.
Although female sexuality is exploited in present day hip-hip and rap culture, this is an ongoing trend that dates back to the era of slavery, when American society allowed whites to sexualize their world by projecting a narrative of sexualization onto black bodies (Campbell 501).
“Sexual hierarchies or preferences from the American slavery era are …replicated by representations for women in hip hop music and videos for male preadolescents to internalize as a ‘golden standard’ of beauty. The Hip Hop music industry and the cultural niche it reproduces is predominantly an extension of European American patriarchy within a racialized context of racial identity” (Stephens & Few, 258).
Campbell cites a crucial aspect in the process of having access to forms of sexual expression, depicting the ‘golden standard’ was the isolation of particular black body parts as fetish object. “As a visible sign of their Otherness, black women’s buttocks came to embody a range of white desires” (Campbell 501). By citing Sarah Baartman, an African woman with a large posterior who in 1801 was paraded around, naked, on display as “Hottentot Venus” for whites to view her, Campbell is making a clear reference to the “otherization” of black women through the use of body parts. Baartmann was paraded around Britain, forced to entertain White Europeans by overtly showing her nude buttocks and was eventually dissected after her death, with her genitals continuing to be displayed at museums after her death. “Since the nineteenth century, the ‘booty’ or ‘butt’ has also become a fetish object in black culture, but for very different reasons” (Campbell 501). Citing Tricia Roses, Black Noise, Campbell makes the argument that a celebration of the butt as marking a black woman presents an aesthetic hierarchy that renders black women’s bodies as objects of speculation.
To further delve into the topic of speculation of female body parts, a qualitative study identifying African American early adolescents’ subjective meanings of African American women’s sexuality reports that body size and shape emerged as important aspects of physical attractiveness for African American boys. According to the 2007 study, the boys who were interviews spent a long time discussing the shapes and sizes of African American women’s bodies, expressing a liking for buttocks that were “large and round”, “big breasts”, and “thick thighs”, sentiments that are commonly expressed in rap and hip hop music and videos.
The glorification of these female body parts in hip hop ad rap culture can be seen in such songs as Nelly’s Thicky Thick Girl. By including lyrics that say, “Want real thighs and thick thighs take pride in my stylin,” the implication is not only that “thick thighs” are “real thighs,” as in the only ones that are worth notice, but it also implies that these glorified parts of woman’s body are to be credited to Nelly’s ‘stylin’ or that of men in general, denying any ownership that women have on their own body parts. Also in Sir Mix-A-Lot’s song dedicated to “big butts”, Baby Got Back, the artist says, “I like big butts and I cannot lie..I’m hooked and I can’t stop staring…But that butt you got me so horny…I like’em round and big…My anaconda don’t want none unless you got buns hun.” With a song dedicated solely to big butts, it is hard to imagine that the content of it would be any less demeaning to the female body. Not only must big butts reach the standards of being ‘round and big’ to be accepted by men but it also serves to satisfy male sexual needs. With ‘anaconda’ referring a male’s penis, the artists states that men do not want to have sex unless a women has ‘buns’ or a big butt. Not only to these lyrics prove the intense sexualization of female body parts, but they also serve as examples for the messages being streamed through the media and pop culture, which are highly influential to adolescents. In the Stephen and Few’s study, after stating their preferences for what assets they prefer in the female body, the boys further portioned the female body to the extent that it was discussed in individual parts, similar to the songs about ‘thick thighs’ and ‘big butts’. One boy explained, “’If her [buttocks] is nice and round, who cares about the rest- you don’t have to look at it”” (Stephens & Few, 258). This examination of body parts, not only echoes the sentiments expressed in Sir Mix-A-Lot’s music but it also engages in the practice of reducing the female to a mere object that was only worth looking at by dissection. Stephens and Few state that the objectification of specific female body parts has been normalized in the projections of female imagery in Hip Hop culture. They also add that the process of dissection and disregard for the woman as a whole makes it easier for men to sexualize and objectify women (Stephen & Few, 258).
One of the rap songs that caused the most controversy was Nelly’s 2003 song, Tip Drill. The controversy arose when students at Spelman College, a historically black women’s college in Atlanta, protested the rap artist’s appearance at their bone marrow drive sponsored Nelly’s foundation, 4 sho 4 kids. The drive was cancelled after the protest and a statement released to the press by the Vice President of Student Affairs stated that the school was concerned about the negative images of women in popular culture and images that portray women in a sexual manner. The school newspaper reported that the point of contention for many students was the Tip Drill music video that’s shows women “dressed in bikinis, run(ning) around topless, and are shown making out with one another (Cummings 2004). The article also points out one particular scene towards the end of the video where Nelly is shown looking into the camera and swiping a credit card down the middle of a woman’s backside. Sheng Kuan Chung states in the article Sexism in Hip-Hop Music Videos that in music videos, women perform erotic moves to attract men’s attention as the camera zooms into their hips, buttocks, and breasts. “The rapper glorifies himself as a well-off-pimp and uses provocative language to express his disrespect for these female dancers” (Chung, 35). There is no better example than Nelly’s Tip Drill music video which is a montage of pornographic clips showing women naked or scantily clad, gyrating their bodies in a sexual manner and trying to lure the men around her who are throwing money at her all the while. With the camera zooming in to every body part but her face and the lyrics, “It must be her ass because it ain’t her face. I need a (tip drill)…” being sang repeatedly, it is clear that the emphasis is being put on the physical attractiveness the females’ body parts. Chung states that in such a hip-hop scene, the female body is the target of the male gaze, which objectifies women’s bodies as sexual trophies.


The same study also found that African American women reported lower levels of body satisfaction after they viewed media images of other African American women. This directly links the effects of the hip-hop culture’s portrayal of the ideal woman as showcased in music videos.

“Black women’s bodies, historically, have been sites of sexualized commodification and spectacle…During slavery their bodies represented production and reproduction, allowing slave owners to increase their property while satisfying their lust.” (Chang 35)
Chang notes that this ideology, still present today, promotes women’s bodies as sexual commodities. Furthermore, hip-hop media programs exploit the ideology in order to authenticate hip-hop identity.