Reflections From a Murky Pond

The entire hip-hop genre, but especially rap “music,” is fundamentally and endemically misogynist. It has a plethora of other inescapable antisocial components but misogyny is the one thing that is completely pervasive throughout this sad mockery of music.

Just imagine what would happen if a female rapper turned the tables on the ghetto bucks…

Bounce That Dick

Jenna Marbles does a pretty good and hilarious job with her rap role reversal, Bounce That Dick. I’d laugh my ass off even though if some female rapper really did something like that.

It’d be fun to watch and hear some women talking trash to these thugs. They normally only get to hear that shit in prison when they’re getting pimped out for commissary.

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There is a belief that “beautiful” is “White” that many girls and women around the world subscribe and adhere to. The media portrayal of images that support this ideal has promulgated the American and European beauty ideal; pale to fair skin, long straight hair – blond is best – light eyes, slim nose, and a skinny figure.

Even highly paid Black fashion models such as: Iman, Naomi Campbell, Tyra Banks, Liya Kebede, Jourdan Dunn, and the ill-fated Katoucha Niane, tended towards having a slim figure, fair skin, and straight or, at least, smooth hair.

In other words, Black models have to be an exotic twist upon normative White features in order to be considered beautiful and employable.

For the most part even the “passable” Black models are consigned to double bookings with a White model and/or to modeling exotica and “urban” fashion.

This has naturally led to Black girls and women being presented with a beauty ideal that they are genetically and physical incapable of fully meeting, though many people were willing to make money selling them “treatments” to get them a little closer to it.

In the U.S. specifically, many Black women were faced with a beauty ideal that did not resemble the reflection in the mirror. Many entrepreneurs began and sustained successful businesses based on selling the white ideal to the Black woman. Skin lightning became a common practice in the Black community

– Kathy Russel
The Color Complex:
The Politics of Skin Color Among African Americans

That’s a crying shame since – leaving all the societal ills caused by cultural self-image problems aside for now – there’s many, many different roads to beauty and/or sexiness and Black women who look like any of the myriad varieties of Black women can and have traveled many of them.

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On February 8, 2009 R & B star Chris Brown is “alleged” to have beaten and threatened to kill his girlfriend and fellow R & B artist Rihanna. The media frenzy surrounding the incident continues to this day (March 14, 2009).

The latest furor – small and localized as of yet, but it will most likely grow – is over the findings of a survey conducted by the Boston Public Health Commission in the immediate wake of the Brown v. Rihanna altercation. It seems that almost half of Boston area teens think Rihanna is to blame for the assault. Some people are dismayed by the responses of the 200 Boston youths (ages 12 to 19) surveyed last month by Boston Public Health Commission.

Among the findings:

• 71% said arguing was a normal part of a relationship
• 44% said fighting was a normal part of a relationship
• 51% said Chris Brown was responsible for the incident
• 46% said Rihanna was responsible for the incident
• 52% said both individuals were to blame for the incident
• 35% said the media were treating Rihanna unfairly
• 52% said the media were treating Chris Brown unfairly

Since 51% + 46% + 52% = 149% (!) the findings listed were either the result of separate questions or a deliberate overlap / massaging of the results by the BPHC.

Additionally, a significant number respondents in the survey said Rihanna was destroying Chris Brown’s career, and it was shown that females were no less likely than males to come to Rihanna’s defense in this matter.

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