post 4

BET UNCUT

     As a kid growing up, I remember a time when my mom didn’t allow my brother and I to watch, music videos. At the time I didn’t understand why we couldn’t watch music videos. All my friends were watching them. We would meet up in our school cafeteria and my friends would discuss the latest music video out. I remember feeling left out of my circle of friends when they would talk about music videos. Especially, music videos from rappers. So, one day on a Friday night I stayed up late and waited til my parents and little brother go to sleep. I turn on the tv and I changed the channel to BET. I didn’t know was going to be on BET when I change the channel. However, once I found out I will never forget what I saw. I watched my first music video that night on BET uncut. BET uncut was not your average music video channel. The video show explicit scenes and bare naked women in the videos. The music video I watched was Mystical video danger. The song features Nieve. I remember watching the video when I was a kid and at first, I thought I wasn’t bad, the lyrics in the song was explicit but that was pretty much it, until a thirty seconds later. The rapper mystical is taken to a bar with half dress women in it. They had on leather short skirts and bras. I was amazed and excited at the time because I got the chance to see what I was missing out on from my friend's lunchroom conversations. While watching the video I was slightly turned on by it.

Mystical Danger Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHrV51GOPkE

   At the time I didn’t know what the issues were with hip-hop music videos and women of color dancing half-naked in the video. I just thought that it was just way how it should be because the majority of hip-hop music I stayed up to watch had the same concept when it came to women in the videos.

    It wasn’t until I got older and realized how this affected the black community. Especially black women. Music videos like Mystical “Danger” wasn’t a great representation for black women. Black women were oversexualized in the videos because there breast and butt was always shown in the videos. The messages that it sent out to the black community, were that black women should have curves and flaunt their curves for men. The message this sent out to men was this was the only way you could find black women to be attractive. The most important message this problem is sending out to the black community is that black women are only appreciated because of their curves, their curvy body is what makes the beautiful. This is a huge problem for the black community. The problem is young black women are seeing a false representation of what they should look like from music videos. It makes me upset because I would hear stories about young black women getting plastic surgeries and butt injections to have bigger breast and butt. In most cases, the young women are getting sick from the butt injections or dying. Just because they can look like the girls from the music videos had big butts and breast. I think the people responsible for this is the music industry and rappers. The music industry is using sex sells the routine. Majority of the rappers are made music that degrades women and exploits them, especially in the 90’s and earlier 2000’s

.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_RfFrkkD6U&list=PLCQCtoOJpI_AQ1zoBfH6iRmNNAwhwteKb

   However I noticed a slight changed in hip-hop music videos, I noticed that there is less booty bouncing and more women of color in music videos cover up now and not wearing revealing outfits. Why is there a change? I believe it because the music content is different now. A lot of rappers settle down, got married and had kids. There are more rappers who are socially aware of the problem. They are also more aware of political issues and injustice against black people currently. So thing has taken a turn for now, on how black women are being oversexualized in music videos