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.

My husband has a big beard and hair everywhere else thanks.

That's good for you. It would repulse me.

I take it you don't trim any nose hairs, wax any lip hair? You don't like to make your head hair look "pretty"? You don't wear anti-wrinkle cream or anything, it's all about the function to you?

Some genital piercings are for appearance. Like the Xtina or the Mount of Venus.

You do you. I like mine to look pretty (as pretty as genitals can, as genitals are kinda gross anyway).

Genital piercings are for the feels

Not all of them. Some don't touch anything to stimulate it. A mount of venus is a surface piercing (like an eyebrow) on your mons pubis. A Xtina can touch the clitoral hood or not depending on anatomy. I would get one for the look, not the feel.

www.instagram.com/p/B8qUSn-FDM3/?igshid=6nd8rr1d6d6g

This touches nothing and is just for the look, for example.

I take it you don't trim any nose hairs, wax any lip hair? You don't like to make your head hair look "pretty"? You don't wear anti-wrinkle cream or anything, it's all about the function to you?

Other than brushing my head hair, nope I don’t do any of that.

Years ago hairless vaginas were the preserve of specialist porn magazines.

Other than brushing my head hair, nope I don’t do any of that.

Well you're in the minority. Most women like to do at least some things relating to looking appealing. I mean, even men do!

Even men do

I know! Even my husband uses hairspray and trims his beard and pubes etc. I can't imagine doing nothing at all 😂☠️

@TunaWhite

Genital piercings are for the feels

Not all of them. Some don't touch anything to stimulate it. A mount of venus is a surface piercing (like an eyebrow) on your mons pubis. A Xtina can touch the clitoral hood or not depending on anatomy. I would get one for the look, not the feel.

But I can still hang my keys on it, yeah?

But I can still hang my keys on it, yeah?

Nope. No ring. It's a bar with only the gems visible. Maybe if you really tried

I do like a challenge.

Well you're in the minority. Most women like to do at least some things relating to looking appealing. I mean, even men do!

You do know beauty is in the eye of the beholder tunawhite ?
I don't find the natural look unattractive at all. You find hairy people repulsive. I find a lot of the things people do to themselves in the name of beauty unattractive. Each to their own.

@TunaWhite

www.instagram.com/p/B8qUSn-FDM3/?igshid=6nd8rr1d6d6g

This touches nothing and is just for the look, for example.

I was puzzled as to why I was looking at a picture of a plucked chicken with a piece of jewellery inserted in it.

I’d find a man who pissed about shaving his balls and putting on hair spray repulsive so it’s a good job we have the husbands we have isn’t it.

If this track is about empowering female sexuality, why do the women in the video conform to such a limited stereotypical view of sexiness? Where are the women over 40? The ones without implants and hair extensions? Without their lips plumped up with filled and their faces coated in make up? The ones with hairy armpits?

Could it be they’re not there because .... men don’t want to wank over them?

@ButterflyC

Other than brushing my head hair, nope I don’t do any of that.

Well you're in the minority. Most women like to do at least some things relating to looking appealing. I mean, even men do!

Not in the minority at all. Most women don't wear make-up, for example.

At the time of punk, second wave feminism was happening and people didn’t pretend not to understand how violent sex was a way of subjugating women.

Hence these female punk lyrics:

‘I've got 54321,
I've got a red pair of high-heels on,
Tumble me over, it doesn't take much,
Tumble me over, tumble me, push.
In my red high-heels I've no control,
The rituals of repression are so old,
You can do what you like, there'll be no reprisal,
I'm yours, yes I'm yours, it's my means of survival.

I've got 54321,
Come on my love, I know you're strong,
Push me hard, make me stagger,
The pain in my back just doesn't matter.
You force-hold me above the ground,
I can't get away, my feet are bound,
So I'm bound to say,
That I'm bound to stay’

It only takes a few lines in it to make the link between personal submission and the subjugation of all women.

The cognitive dissonance required for women forty years later to claim that they don’t understand this is strange, although I suppose we are in a time of cognitive dissonance.

Am I the only one old enough to remember ‘You Suck’ by Consolidated?

Ooh! That was a great track TheRealMcKenna. The Yeastie Girlz.

genius.com/Consolidated-you-suck-lyrics

That was witty, funny, woman-pleasing, the opposite of trying to sell female sexual degradation for male pleasure. I’ll be requesting that and some Missy Elliot at the next FWR club night

I have never heard any male rappers lauding their own/male sexual degradation though. Let alone hearing any male rappers boasting about themselves being ‘whores’ paid for sex (especially sex involving being physically disempowered or in pain)?

There must be massively popular mainstream examples around, if Cardi B and Megan, major mainstream female artists, are making this track to provide equality with men/male artists...?

You do know beauty is in the eye of the beholder tunawhite ?

Exactly. But if I say I think genitals look more sexually appealing shaved or trimmed than bushy, I'm a slave to the patriarchy. Unless you like everything natural, it's been forced on you. I started shaving down there way before I even had sex, or watched porn. My grandma was horrified when she found out, couldn't understand it, but likewise I'd seen hers and couldn't understand wanting it to be as unruly as hers looked. She wouldn't want mine and I wouldn't want hers. Similar to the "I wouldn't want your husband and you wouldn't want mine" because we don't all look at the same thing and like it. Some would look at my husband and think God no, others would like it, the same way I might look at your husband or wife.

Was just reading that Megan Thee Stallion was shot in both feet by rapper Tory Lanez: www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-53566830

In each shot, Stallion wears footwear that cleverly hides parts of her feet. In another shot, she lies on her back on a pile of apple boxes wearing a pair of oversized thigh-high boots in a glossy coated camel leather. The scrunchy boots completely hide her feet with a closed pointed toe

For the cover shoot, which was styled by Jason Bolden, Stallion showed strength in a bodycon black dress with long sleeves and a cutout open neckline. The minimalist look was paired with black square-toed stiletto heels with a thong toe strap and plenty of coverage to cover up parts of her feet. In a few of the shots, the “Girls In The Hood” singer also finished off the look with a glossy brown snakeskin coat. Another look had the rapper in a glossy black Balmain gown and thigh-high velvet boots by Balenciaga

I started shaving down there way before I even had sex, or watched porn.

So even as a young teenager you had picked up messages that pubic hair shouldn't be unruly, despite the adult women in your life demonstrating that it's fine.

Because I am pretty certain that if you grew up in the 70s or 80s you would have had sex before considering shaving your genitals.

None of us exist in a vacuum, we make choices within the society we live in. Yours has given the message that pubic hair needs removing.

"
I fear her growing up in a misogynistic society where a women saying she wants to choke on a guy's dick is considered empowering, and women who don't go along with being choked and basically sex objects for men are accused of kink-shaming (see attached image in my previous post) or being prudes."

EXACTLY THIS!!!