Hi welcome to TWIL #4 and let me tell you this has been a really good week for my learning. We started the week by watching the music video to “Man it feels good to be a woman” by Shania Twain. Willemse introduced this video to us by asking the very vague question “does this empower or objectify women?”. After watching the video majority of the room seemed to think it was empowering while some argued that she was in fact objectifying herself for the male audience. I found myself agreeing with both sides and not knowing which was the “right answer”.

This whole subject really got me thinking about everything and so I had conversations with my friends and family about what they thought was the difference between objectification and empowerment. Later that day when I was in the car I heard the radio broadcaster talking about how “WAP” by Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion was a very gross and forward song and because of that was almost never played on the radio. I started to think about how almost every boy who ever mentioned that song liked to talk about how weird and disgusting it was. Now the lyrics and subjects of it as well as the video are definitely not school appropriate, and so I cannot show them here. I will link the lyrics and video if you want to understand better. The flip side of the “it’s gross” argument is that majority of rap songs written by men are about having sex or getting women to have sex with them. These people believe that these two female artists are in control and are therefore empowering themselves.

 

I thought about this and then in the car decided to look up an article and see what others thought. Does WAP objectify or empower women? I ended up finding an extremely interesting article from Rhys Lindmark that talked about what the actual difference between empowerment and objectification is. The first thing the author brings up is how no matter what you believe the video is, empowerment and objectification are two sides of the same coin, meaning both are right and wrong. Anything that is empowering can be objectifying and anything that is objectifying can be empowering. The only decision you can make is if one is greater than the other, and that relies on who has the power. If Cardi B made this song and video to feel confident and sexy within herself then it would be considered more empowering. But if it was a male or different person telling her to do this when she maybe didn’t want to that would be objectification.


Another point the author mentions is how many things now are labeled as “empowerment” when they might not deserve it. The reality is sex sells. That’s what gets views and money, an example being this WAP music video released in August 2020 has almost 280 million views! So while we can say or believe that the woman is doing this to feel confident and powerful, we also have to keep in mind she is making a LOT of money from acting like this and singing about this. You can see examples of this all over the internet. It’s the same as on TikTok seeing girls doing dances in bikinis or other revealing clothing. They are just having a good time dancing but they are also probably getting more attention from it and even if they say it’s empowering for them they can’t control how someone else uses that video. I once heard a YouTuber say “the internet in 2020 is a dream for a pedophile” and they’re not wrong. As much as we want to be a progressive society and let people do what they want we can never really end this whole battle of objectification or sexism because everyone is different. Some women (and men) might truly prefer acting more sexual and it’s not society’s place to tell them to cover up. We will never be able to determine if something is truly empowering or objectifying and so our society will have to make progress in some other way.

Researching this extra article helped me significantly in class to brainstorm ideas. We did our milestone 3 this week where I had to research and present what has changed and stayed the same for women from the 90s to now. I wanted to focus on the objectification aspect as I felt like I had a good understanding of it and it was something I really wanted to think about more. Discussing these social issues in class and having somewhat “controversial” discussions are really making me inspired to learn. I love learning and talking about social justice in the world and I hope if I learn enough I can make a difference.