Taylor Swift vs Nicki Minaj

The point is that black women in America have been demeaned for the last 400 years. Their bodies are seen as not pretty; they aren't desirable; they are not properly femine. In the worst of all possible worlds, where women's only asset/power is their looks/erotic capital, black women were denied even this..

So while I appreciate feminists wanting to move on from women just being seen as desirable, I can totally understand why NM would want to make the point that black women are highly desirable and capable of bringing a man to his knees through their sex appeal. Something that was always theirs, but was somehow denied through the sheer force of a hateful culture.

Whichever way you look at it, the massive obsession with sex and body image is depressing.

Whichever way you look at it, the massive obsession with sex and body image is depressing.

Fauchelevent
I went back over NM Twitter feed just to confirm my understanding, her first tweet was ref 'women with very slim bodies', like I said, many black women are very slim too. You cannot interpret that as a comment about race.

TS then calls her on it re pitting women against each other and then NM changes tack and it apparently does become a race issue.
TS is PR savvy, not in a million years was she going to continue an argument once it became about race so she apologised, of course. Not all publicity is good publicity.

None of that changes the fact the NM video is utter shit and I would not want any young girl to emulate her or for that matter TS, who also comes across as fairly vacuous.

There is a debate to have around sexism and racism in the music industry but Minaj has shown no credentials to validate her involvement in a discussion on either count. Quite the opposite IMO.

She missed out on a nomination, toys went out of pram, that is as deep and wide as it goes.

Achieve, I think there was a couple where they were dressed up in some kind of futuristic way and each had a 'character' and were travelling around fighting people.

Almond - which MCR video please?

The bit with Drake is still "give the man a treat" even if he doesn't get an actual shag. I don't know the in-joke but the way it's explained isn't any different.

I don't think Swift's video is either feminist or objectifying of women.

The Minaj video is pretty extreme objectification.

Wouldn't it be nice if there was some way for a women to show her "power" other than in making a man want to wank off?

And so what if she bats his hand away? It's still only "power" because she's playing into a male sexual fantasy, which is no kind of power at all.

Wait what does MCR have to do with this, sorry? As in to prove how feminist she is because there's no difference between what she does and what men do?

Anyway Taylor Swift is a family fave but she's far from perfect. Did she not pit women against each other in "you belong with me"? Did she not pose with a boy in a swastika? I'm sure she's sweet and lovely but let's not pretend she's the pinnacle of feminist glory because in the same way you can't relate to what NM does, I don't relate to Taylor Swift, she doesn't speak for women like me and I find her neither here nor there, a bit non-descript. Granted though she is lovely to her fans.

Firstly, the whole video is not a lap dance and the bit with drake is as I explained it. I just don't think it's as black and white (ha) as "my feminism says doing X is bad so NM doing X is bad" because NM's feminism, and the feminism of many BW is very different to mainstream feminism (sorry I don't want to presume you're white?) but effectively from a white feminist gaze this is a woman titilating men for the pleasure of men and that - across all feminisms I'd say - is patriarchal.

But many black feminists view it entirely differently and considering white feminism has historically erased black women, black feminism does not owe white women a liberation that they accept, like or can understand. Black feminism is about black women, and although that sounds selfish we have a different set of struggles that we deal with in ways that are rooted in our own histories and contexts. The ways we deal with things might not make sense to white feminists but you have to remember the histories of our womanhood is so different. I'm not against fighting together, and it might seem divisive, but on our shared struggles we should fight together - but where our struggles diverge, a feminism that is rooted in black women's history better understands the needs and struggles of black women.

I think that NM has cleverly turned her "slim girls" tweet into a comment about racism in the music industry, when originally it was clearly a dig at TS, the only other woman (apart from Beyoncé) nominated in the category from which NM was omitted.

From a personal perspective, watching the anaconda video made me feel extremely uncomfortable, in the same way pornography does.

I don't see what difference that makes. It is still a video of someone lap dancing. Is lap dancing cool?

Other than the heels and spandex, I don't see much difference between Swift's video and a My Chemical Romance one. I don't think I've seen a video of a guy lap dancing on a woman to show his lack of interest in her.

I don't know how I know so much about this, 95% of what I listen to are musical theatre cast recordings but I feel like I'm in with the cool kids now. ruins the illusion

That guy was Drake, friend of Nicki and fellow rapper and it's an in-joke because he's known for being the dorky lovesick puppy of rap (personally i find his voice weird and nasal and i don't find him attractive) - not at all the brute misogynists that most (black) rappers are portrayed as. Anyway his well-known crush on Nicki is oft joked about and she has no interest in him... the end of Anaconda is a reference and in joke regarding that because he never actually gets to touch her. Make of it what you will.

Forgot the link!

www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/08/20/nicki_minaj_anaconda_video_watch_her_celebrate_her_assets_in_the_visuals.html

Here's a short critique of the Anaconda video by some Washington Post journalists. (The Washington Post along with the New York Times are two highly respected US broadsheets.)

I think it is a fair representation of how educated people in the US would view the video. So, an intelligent view from inside the culture.

side note - I've just watched the Rihanna video that won the award.

Awful. I love that song but the voiceover at the start....I honestly wonder sometimes if we have so many people in horrible relationships because our culture tells us all consuming love is actually important.

Bad Blood is looking better and better! But yes, Rihanna won that award so....still not sure NM has a point. Also, re history of twerking, if NM's video had paid tribute to that, maybe, but there was a bloke there just eyeing up a woman's arse. Eugh.

@noble I sort of agree with the shallow packaging but it's pop culture and media isn't it? It's not very often a "They Don't Really Care About Us" comes along where a successful pop song by a huuuge pop singer is unmistakably political in ways that very much against the status quo (so i don't mean like campaigns for africa and what not) - most come watered down in some ways and that's sad :(
And yeah it's not that black people don't ever win, it's just there is a double standard and in the same way Obama, Oprah, etc have been able to succeed - one success doesn't negate the inherent racism of the music industry.

Fauch it's interesting the interpretation you have of the song and the lyrics. It's a shame they come in such a shallow packaging, making NM so easy to write off (as indeed MTV have done).

I note that Rihanna won best video in 2012. I'm finding it hard to believe that Nicki was snubbed because she was black, it's so much easier to believe it was because the video is terrible.

"Really interesting post Fauch, thank you. You're right that my analysis of twerking would see it as something like a lap dance, ie something sexy for the male gaze. I'll have to do some digging into the history, as always eager to learn not to make these mistakes."

Right, so in that Anaconda video there is a man sat in a chair, and there's a woman rubbing her arse against his lap and shaking it in his face.

How is this different to lap dancing? I thought that was what lap dancing was.

Although actually she crawls across the floor first, to get to the man sat on the chair, which is above and beyond the job description of a lap dance, I assume.

I'm pretty sure I'm not reading a sex work meaning into it because of the ethnicity of the artist.

No no, I agree with that and I sort of knew that when I wrote it. It's true you can't avoid it - although that's more an issue of the ubiquity of pop culture and brands and celebrity. I can't claim to be old enough to know a time when we weren't saturated with constant images like that, but I think it's a battle that's bigger than us and bigger than the artists.

I don't think kids should be so exposed to explicit media, not at all, although I think explicit media (as long as it's not awful in all the ways explicit media can be - violence, misogyny, racism etc) should be able to exist and it's expliciticiticiticity (??) always doesn't invalidate the merits it does have

Luckily there are wholesome/family friendly vids and I think Taylor Swift is one of those artists. She's nice to fans and her songs usually are safe-for-family.

But Fauch it's not like you can easily avoid it.

All this stuff informs popular culture and you do see it, often in insidious and watered down ways in everyday youth culture.

I have a year 2 child in my class who watches MTV (yes, I wouldn't let her either but evidently her parents do). I had to speak to her during a dance lesson as she was using "props" (chairs, tables and the wall) to writhe around and against. It was a crude 7 year old's imitation of the soft porn stuff she's seen on the TV. And the other girls who haven't seen it watch her and copy.

I'm not asking for us to go back to the days when teachers used a ruler to measure the distance between you and the boy you were dancing with at the disco, but can't we have good songs with good videos by mainstream artists which don't depict women as porn stars?

Controversially I don't really think Nicki owes it to anyone to be a model of respectable attractiveness.

It's well researched that Black girls grow up believing they're unattractive and ugly and many studies which find that people will consistently vote us the least attractive, least desirable group of women. So "young impressionable girls" are probably not getting messages of what's desirable from Nicki or Rihanna. In fact Anaconda didn't even spark any trends to do with dancing or how to perform that kind of sexuality.

And fine if you don't want to see it! You don't like it or approve, that's fine! It doesn't take away from the value it has to other women though.

I don't think MN displays properly on my ipad - Cain, when I said you had made me lol, I meant your first, and at the time I replied, no other posts were shown underneath? Confusing.

Glad they sorted it out