Can someone help me understand how these lyrics are being seen as female empowerment?

[QuentinQuarantino]

WAP by Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion.

Lyrics.

The video, predictably, is surgically enhanced T&A with celebrity cameos providing additional surgically enhanced T&A.

It's being lauded as celebratory of female sexuality and empowerment by lib fems such as Lena Dunham.

I am only(?) 40 and don't consider myself an old fart by any means but I just can't accept that this song (lyrics and video) is anything other than women perpetuating a toxic male view of women as nothing more than receptacles for their dicks.

Hypersexualised, pornified, emphasis on attaining material goods based on how well you perform sex acts.

I know, I know I can just ignore and not be affected but I've always been a huge fan of pop music and seeing this shit so mainstream is just depressing. And as a mother of a daughter it makes me feel queasy.

@TheRealMcKenna

If I’m understanding this ‘song’ correctly, the overall message is “men pay me in order to provide me with sexual gratification, because that’s what they want and why they pay for it”.

I know I’ve led a sheltered life, but I really wasn’t aware that was how the ‘sex industry’ worked. I always thought it was the opposite way round, but I must have got it wrong all these years. Oh well, live and learn I guess...

Cardi B has talked about this sort of thing in interviews and such. In a way I think what she's getting at is that some people (men often ) not only enjoy making lots of money because they want the money, they actually get a kind of power trip or thrill out of it. She's suggesting that her sexual performance can be a manifestation of power. Which might very well be how she experiences it I guess, she's certainly become quite rich. Whether you can validly extrapolate that to other women's experience I doubt but then you can't generally extrapolate anything about the experience of the elite to most regular people.

Fundamentally I think it's a degraded for of sexuality, and so it can't be empowering in a real way, to men or women. Using other people, reducing them to sexual objects or creatures to be fleeced for their money, is never really empowering, quite the opposite. So the question of whether this is empowering in the same way male demonstrations of sexual power are is starting from a flawed premise.

The video reminds me of a french and Saunders parody.

Fundamentally I think it's a degraded for of sexuality, and so it can't be empowering in a real way, to men or women. Using other people, reducing them to sexual objects or creatures to be fleeced for their money, is never really empowering, quite the opposite. So the question of whether this is empowering in the same way male demonstrations of sexual power are is starting from a flawed premise.

I agree, and thanks for the explanation. I’m no hip hop/rap fan and never have been, so Cardi B is not someone I have ever taken any notice of.

For science I have just attempted to touch my uvula. I am now full of regret. But also, if I can touch it with my index finger then I'm not sure that it's an indicator of anything particularly long...

In a way I think what she's getting at is that some people (men often ) not only enjoy making lots of money because they want the money, they actually get a kind of power trip or thrill out of it

I suppose the, "empowerment" thing in the "sex trade" , which for this comment includes this video, stripping, etc is the idea that women taking their clothes off have some sort of power over me. But all it comes down to is provoking an erection.

On the other hand the men are equally "empowered" by their ability, for not particularly huge amounts of cash, to make a woman do something which most other women would not do at all but the "sex worker" will do for money.

It's not empowering either party- far from it.

@RadicalFern

For science I have just attempted to touch my uvula. I am now full of regret. But also, if I can touch it with my index finger then I'm not sure that it's an indicator of anything particularly long...

I did it with a toothbrush once by accident. Won’t be doing that for fun.

My issue is that as usual the "empowering female sexuality" portrayed here isn't about female pleasure at all, it's lauding the "power" of using your "sexuality" as in your sexual performance in an instrumental way to gain material goods/influence over men...

Septuagenarian singers are perfectly capable of the same...

and it can be wonderful, playful, flirtatious, funny

I wish for the good old days when women sang proper songs that weren't remotely crude or explicitly sexual

Whan I saw WAP I was immediately reminded of a scene for the Cocteau film la Belle et la Bette

Belle arrives at the Beast's castle, a dream like place in which the walls are literally alive with body parts

[quote hoodathunkit]My issue is that as usual the "empowering female sexuality" portrayed here isn't about female pleasure at all, it's lauding the "power" of using your "sexuality" as in your sexual performance in an instrumental way to gain material goods/influence over men...

Septuagenarian singers are perfectly capable of the same...

and it can be wonderful, playful, flirtatious, funny

[/quote] Way off track, but Blossom Dearie's voice is still wonderful at 70 plus.

The other influence, in terms of a dream like, surreal mansion full of scary, yet sometimes sexual imagery is the old cartoon Bimbo's Initiation

There is some other visual reference I can half remember, will post about it if I can remember it

So, firstly, I love the blues and I am very interested in old sexually explicit blues songs of which there are many.

As for WAP, it does combine a lot of obviously porn inspired imagery with surreal, dream like imagery.

It combines a Beauty and the Beast type imagery that is obviously inspired by fairy tales with sexually provocative imagery.

Given that many fairy tales are full of crude Freudian symbolism it combines many things feel deeply dream like and unconscious with many things that are superficial.

However this is exactly what happens in the Beauty and the Beast story, when Beauty enters the Beast's magical castle and encounters strange rooms with body parts decorating the wall. The Beast then offers Beauty all manner of wonderful jewellery and unimaginable riches.

in the WAP video there are various Beauty's and they are surrounded by big cats (pussies) but these are not little kittens they are powerful beasts.

So on initial perusal this video is a hip hop, very adult version of Beauty and the Beast in which Beauty is the Beast, or at least possesses the beast and is the one making all the demands.

I have only seen the video a couple of times and not thought it through to any depth, just my initial thoughts

Deep.

Well this thread has made me want to listen to some Millie Jackson.

Well this thread has made me want to listen to some Millie Jackson.

Way off track, but Blossom Dearie's voice is still wonderful at 70 plus.

Ain't it just? :)

I'm a massve Blossom fan

Let's have some more Millie

on a roll

:)

and women should be free to explore their own sexuality and not channelled sown increasingly narrower channels of what they are allowed to think they enjoy

Completely agree that women should be free to explore their own sexuality. but where the hell do people get off telling other women that they only like something because "they've been told that they're allowed to like that?"
Are women individual people capable of independent thought, or not?

@hoodathunkit

Well this thread has made me want to listen to some Millie Jackson.

I’m going to start using “my house is cold” as a euphemism

There so much misogyny in rap lyrics, and in more recent times grime music' ,and grime musicians have a pretty bad reputation for their behaviour towards women: gal-dem.com/stormzy-wiley-grime-beef-clash-misogyny/

They both come across as utterly foul. And yes, it wouldn't have taken much to look up the word 'uvula'. And what's with the 'Megan THEE Stallion' business? Can she not spell 'the'?

I'm guessing that calling the uvula "the little dangly thing" was for comedic effect, making reference to that "oh, what is that thing called, you know, the ... THING" phenomenon we all do sometimes.

Or maybe they remember Peggy Hill thinking it was a rude word and thought it was a step too far even for this song!

@DidoLamenting

In a way I think what she's getting at is that some people (men often ) not only enjoy making lots of money because they want the money, they actually get a kind of power trip or thrill out of it

I suppose the, "empowerment" thing in the "sex trade" , which for this comment includes this video, stripping, etc is the idea that women taking their clothes off have some sort of power over me. But all it comes down to is provoking an erection.

On the other hand the men are equally "empowered" by their ability, for not particularly huge amounts of cash, to make a woman do something which most other women would not do at all but the "sex worker" will do for money.

It's not empowering either party- far from it.

Absolutely.

But I think there is a sort of missmatch of intention when we say, a male artist who writes something equivalent from a male POV is writing about male power, whereas Cardi B isn't writing about female power.

They are both talking about a kind of degenerate view of themselves and others that is destructive of human relationships.

But if there is a sector of society that accepts that idea of sex, the song is just an expression of that.

There so much misogyny in rap lyrics, and in more recent times grime music' ,and grime musicians have a pretty bad reputation for their behaviour towards women

Musicians and vocalists, whatever the genre, include misogynists and men who behave badly towards women.

Some rap is misogynist, some is not. There is a lot of rap and spoken word that is progressive and empowering, challenging, true.