The second was that the body sizes of females differed as the functions of the videos differed. Another study performed focused on the exposure to sexual hip-hop videos and their influence on the attitudes of college students. The study investigated short-term effects of exposure to hip-hop music videos with different degrees of sexual imagery. The experiment used 195 participants from a large Northwestern university, all undergraduates. There were 59 males and 136 females that participated. The participants viewed 5 hip hop videos of either high sexual content or low sexual content.
The results concluded that male participants who were exposed to hip-hop videos with high sexual content showed greater objectification of women, sexual permissiveness, stereotypical gender attitudes, and the expectance of rape than those who were shown videos with low sexual content. The results founded for the female participants were mixed. Another study was conducted and it focused on how women are portrayed in popular music today. It focuses on more discussion rather than a study. It uses the feminist approach for the method. The article goes on to discuss the multiple roles women typically play in music videos.
Those include sexual beings, vulnerable and submissive, and worshiping men. Some songs’ lyrics discuss violence against women, controlling women, and sexually using women. It goes on to discuss the fact that despite the derogatory nature popular music has, women still listen to the music and actually support these artists by purchasing their CDs. The article focuses on one particular song titled “Right Round” by an artist named Flo Rida. The song came out in 2009 and was an instant hit. The song goes on to discuss the artist being hypnotized by a female stripper.
The article does an in-depth critic of the lyrics of the song. The view and aspects of women in music videos is obviously a very important topic. There has been a lot of research and articles done on the subject. The topic of women in the music industry is of great importance for many reasons. For many years, since music videos first came out, women have been used to enhance the videos. Even in the first music video to ever air, “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Buggles, women were used in the video. As backup singers, there are two females featured throughout the video.
One has on a modest dress, plain hair, and no makeup. You cannot see her body shape through the dress; it is not form-fitting. The other female standing next to her has on a pink dress with a high slit, makeup, and has her hair done with a bow in it. Throughout the video the female with the modest dress simply sings, while the other sings while dancing; moving her hips to the beat. For whatever reason, the director only wants one woman to be appealing to men. Maybe this is to make the video seem appropriate for all ages and family friendly, and yet still appeal to the young adult crowd.
Since then, music videos have just gotten worse for the image given to women. Whatever the genre of music, women have been featured in the videos, usually as sexual objects to look at and lust after. Another example came out in 2009, titled “I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho)” by Pitbull. The video first shows Pitbull, but throughout the entire video, just shows women dancing in skimpy clothes. All the women shown in the video are large breasted, either dancing alone, or dancing on the artist. Even when there are songs that are meant to be empowering to women, such as Beyonce’s hit “Run the World (Girls)” there are still sexual elements.
In the song Beyonce is shown dancing in skimpy clothes, and men are seen lusting after to her. The message from the video is basically that despite having power and being strong, you are still a sex image and men will still lust after you. The research done will be more specific to music videos and women being sexually exploited in them. Although studies have been done on this subject matter, this study will be the most popular videos of 2013, and will focus strictly on sexual imagery. There were two testable hypotheses for the study done:
H1: Women are shown as sexual objects in more than half of 20 of the most popular music videos of today’s time. H2: Music videos use women as props and to entice the audience. Methodology The study done was a content analysis that looked at popular music videos of 2013 and focused on the sexual exploitation of women in the videos. The videos used were from a popular website for music, VEVO. The study looked at the top 20 “Top Videos” of the website. There was a list of sexually explicit moments common in music videos such as women in skimpy clothes and women dancing seductively.
There were fifteen different things the study listed to spot in each video. Every time one thing happened, it was be marked. At the end of the 20 videos the data was collected and calculated to be put into a percentile group. A list of all the content that was looked for will be provided below. – Women in skimpy clothing – Women undressing – Women artist yearning for male – Women touching self – Women touching other women – Women artist crying or depressed – Kissing between anyone – Women dancing seductively alone – Women dancing with other women seductively – Women grinding on men.
– Camera focuses in on breasts of women – Camera focuses on buttocks – Women licks lips or object seductively – Women purse lips together or blows kiss – Some type of liquid is poured on female A list of the 20 music videos and artist used for the content analysis will be provided below. – “Molly” by Tyga ft. Cedric Gervais, Wiz Khalifa, and Mally Mall – “Play Hard” by David Guetta ft. Akon and Ne-yo – “Just Give Me a Reason” by Pink ft. Nate Ruess – “#thatPOWER” by will. i. am ft. Justin Beiber – “Stay” by Rihanna ft. Mikky Ekko – “Body Party” by Ciara – “Heart Attack” by Demi Lavato
– “Scream & Shout” by will. i. am ft. Brittney Spears – “Get Lucky” by Daft Punk ft. Pharrell – “Feel This Moment” by Pitbull ft. Christina Aguilera – “22” by Taylor Swift – “Diamonds” by Rihanna – “One Way or Another” by One Direction – “Mirrors” by Justin Timberlake – “Hurricane” by Bridget Mendler – “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepsen – “The Way” by Ariana Grande ft. Mac Miller – “Memories Back Then” by – “Beauty and a Beat” by Justin Beiber ft. Nicki Minaj – “I Need Your Love” by Calvin Harris ft. Ellie Goulding The use of a content analysis had strengths.
One strength being that it was in what data is being obtained and was easy to obtain. It was either there in the video or it is not. Content analysis is also strength as it is solid ground to build another study on using the results of the content analysis. The downfall of the study is that since the videos being used were simply the top 20 of this time period, not were sexually explicit. Results Content Video #1 Video #2 Video #3 Video #4 Video #5 Video #6 Video #7 Video #8 Video #9 Video #10 Women in skimpy clothes X X X X X X X X Women undressing X X X Woman artist yearning for male X X X X.
