Slut-shaming in Popular Music & Song

Shakey OTM x2

is jessie's girl the opposite of this?

Here are the "Light of some Kind" lyrics:

i wish i didn't have this nervous laugh
i wish i didn't say half the stuff i say
i wish i could just learn to cover my tracks
i guess i'm not concerned enough with getting away with it

'cause every time i try to hold my tongue
it slips like a fish from a line
they say if you want to play
you should learn how to play dumb
i guess i can't bring myself to waste your time

'cause we both know what i've been doing
i've been intentionally bad at lying
you're the only boy i ever let see through me
and i hope you believe me when i say i'm trying
and i hope i never improve my game
yeah i'd rather have these things weighing on my mind
and at the end of this tunnel of guilt and shame
there must be a light of some kind
there must be a light of some kind

i must have blown a fuse or something
cause it was so dark in my mind
she came up to me with the sweetest face
and she was holding a light of some kind
and i still think of you as my boyfriend
i don't think this is the end of the world
but i think maybe you should follow my example
and go meet yourself a really nice girl

'cause we both know. . .

in the end the world comes down to just a few people
but for you it comes down to one
but no one ever asked me if i thought i could be
everything to someone
there's a crowd of people harboured in every person
there are so many roles that we play
and you've decided to love me for eternity
i'm still deciding who i want to be today

This song's like...a sea urchin. Some people love it and some people are disgusted by it.
-Todd Rundgren

I hate more or less everything on the fourth side. Or, well... No... I don't, but I hate the idea behind side 4.

I'm seeing a WHOLE lot of slut-shaming in the reaction to Keri Hilson's sluttastic new music video

is it possible to clearly separate slut shaming directed at pop performers from more general objections to sexual explicitness & crassness, or from complaints about appropriateness of content to venue/audience?

nope

What is this the nineteenth century?

i'd agree, NV, given the inclusion of the word "clearly" in my question. take it out, though, and there's a lot of room for equivocation - room enough to recognize that some instances of what might look like slut shaming might be better attributed to other impulses.

and yeah, it is the nineteenth century. and the eighteenth and the 12th and the 22nd. at least some of the time, somewhere, in this or that mind or culture. standards & values are hardly lockstep universal.

hey, I was v. ambiguous at my daughter singing along to "If You Seek Amy" but I guess my response to that wasn't exactly "OMG that Britney's shameless".

the keri hilson video in question:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xES7NPeZS2k

idk, i don't get any particularly desperate vibes from it - but maybe that's cuz i'm familiar with keri hilson, her boss-bitch persona and the amount of control she probably has over these things. it's in keeping with the song, too.

the only issue for me is that control - whether "alutty" videos (and photoshoots &c) are a genuine expression of what the artist wants to convey, or whether it's something they have to resort to when they don't want to do it, or whether they're just being wheeled out by record label bosses and told to take their clothes off. or a mix of all three! it's kinda impossible to actually judge this, and in many cases it's more insulting to assume that the female artist doesn't have agency. obviously there are times when it rings more true than others but that's pretty subjective.

as for sexual explicitness and inappropriateness - they're not bad things per se and i totally welcome them. it's up to parents to parent.

i thought it was amusing earlier this year when (dancehall mc) lady chann tweeted about how much she loved rihanna's "rude boy" and doing a guest verse on a remix of it. and then the following week tweeted something like "HOLD UP my 8-yr-old daughter is singing "come here rude boy can you get it up" around the house :/ "

i mean that video is certainly O_O but it's also about the best visual representation of a song that goes FUCK ME FUCK ME IT'S THE WAY YOU FUCK ME in the chorus

the shaming probably has something to do with the fact that the singles off this album so far have been non-starters -- i haven't read any criticisms of it myself, but i imagine that if this was the first single it would've been seen just as a new direction for her, as opposed to "desperation slutiness!!" (which is how i took it at first too)

she has previous for explicit songs, though - it's never been an integral part of her persona (and i'm guessing won't be after this) but it's enough to make me think she's comfortable with songs like this, rather than resorting to them out of nowhere. and she just seems too smart and level-headed and versed in the ways of the industry to be anyone's puppet here.

did "pretty girl rock" tank? i thought that hadn't even been properly released yet. sad if so.

This song isn't even good, please wake me for commentary when the song is worth listening to. I hate reading a lot of p.c. political commentary over a song that isn't that good. It makes it look like critics or academics don't know what good music is.

well i'm pretty sure u don't

hey, I was v. ambiguous at my daughter singing along to "If You Seek Amy" but I guess my response to that wasn't exactly "OMG that Britney's shameless".

― 3:10 to Your Ma (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, December 1, 2010 3:12 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

You shoulda been there when my son started singing along to "3".

the only issue for me is that control - whether "alutty" videos (and photoshoots &c) are a genuine expression of what the artist wants to convey, or whether it's something they have to resort to when they don't want to do it, or whether they're just being wheeled out by record label bosses and told to take their clothes off. or a mix of all three! it's kinda impossible to actually judge this, and in many cases it's more insulting to assume that the female artist doesn't have agency. obviously there are times when it rings more true than others but that's pretty subjective.

Yeah, I know this is opening a whole can of worms, but I do think that there are other options than just those three. That when you are operating in a culture whereby women are rewarded for how well they *perform* sexuality (in a way they are not rewarded or even discussed, for their technical skills such as to production skills, writing music, lyrics, etc.) you create an environment whereby the perhaps excessive display certain aspects of womanhood (looks, sexuality, etc.) are totally normalised in a way that precludes other choices.

So I don't think it's always just a case of "well, this particular woman had agency and made a choice to present herself in this way" so much as "what were the other choices that were available to her within a culture that values women for looks and sexuality above all else?" Agency doesn't happen in a vacuum.

But, you know, I'm just a boring old feminist who's read too much Ariel Levy. And it's really hard to ask these questions without descending into slut shaming, which I don't want to do.

tl;dr: Lex, it's more complicated than that, and you of all people should know it.

Something I guess where the individual could have agency/power over their own choices - and exercise that - but at same time the exercizing of that choice reinforces what choices there actually are.

yeah i get your points karen, but

a) i'm not going to criticise a performer for performing - keri hilson made a deliberate choice to be a performer as well as a songwriter - but on the other hand her songwriting is kinda the hook on which she found that success as a performer, so i'd disagree that that element of her career hasn't been discussed

b) "precludes other choices" - again talking about keri hilson specifically, i don't think this is the case at all. raunchy videos like this get people all aflutter but her biggest hit came with this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_RqWocthcc

in which she basically wears normal, casual clothing throughout and bar a few doe eyes at the camera (in a song about love) doesn't "perform" sexually. just to reiterate, that was her biggest hit. so i wouldn't say that performing non-sexually is an option that's closed to her.

i'm kind of wondering how keri hilson herself would respond, say if an interviewer brought it up, to the theory that her choices in her career are limited - that she doesn't hold that power - given how much of her public image is of a business-minded, in-control woman. i find it hard to believe that someone who's worked behind the scenes in the industry for as long as she has doesn't know exactly how it works - it could come off as slightly patronising to assume otherwise.

don't think that came out 100% well :/

also EVERY career involves biting the bullet at times and doing things you're not 100% into or comfortable with. and that's ok! not that i'm saying that keri's uncomfortable with this - i have no way of knowing.

i think one can express concern about the hypersexualization of female roles in pop media while still granting individual pop artists the right to express and present themselves in any manner they might choose. and sure, as lex says, the dictates of commerce (driven by the dictates and manipulation of desire) push people into all sorts of compromises that they might not independently choose, but it's probably best to refrain from assuming that this or that performer has been so coerced, even subtly, unless we've got good, case-specific reasons to think so.

which is to say that there's nothing wrong with keri's video, nor is there anything wrong with thinking there's something wrong with it.

just wanna

my response to that wasn't exactly "OMG that Britney's shameless"

acknowledge

A more interesting question is why someone would come out with something that isn't the best example of their work.

and here is keri herself to opine on this: http://twitter.com/MissKeriBaby/statuses/10114357736251392

well said that lady.

Dion - Runaround Sue

When he messes around, it's OK because he's The Wanderer, but the same doesn't go for Runaround Sue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFyRhgCvqaU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEWiHZBBd00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WNLrqLoPSM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bRA0kMl5vE

opening gambits of this thread are fucking awful, wow. kinda feel like it would be better to have another, untainted one for collecting songs or reviews for the rolling evidence drawer. who was kkvgz, and what became of, I assume, him?

now creating problems as the useless mod how's life

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuwPtiTxT8A

'run for your life' - beatles

an "overripe tomato" - ha.

Devil In Disguise - Elvis Presley
Christine's Tune (Devil In Disguise) - Flying Burrito Brothers
Maybelline - Chuck Berry