Double Standards

This weeks video was quite fun to watch as it was a music video for a song that is not completely terrible. The song is OOOUU by Young M.A. which is a song in which the rapper discusses what they would like a woman to do to them and what they would also like to do to a woman. The music video starts with a few friends hanging out and eating Chinese food around a table that is covered in money and alcohol as a sort of ‘flex’. The song starts with M.A. talking about how they’re drunk and just chilling, but they’re looking for ‘hoes’ around trying to find a girl to give some ‘head’ but is still classy. As the song goes on and there’s a shift where Young M.A. begins to in a way gloat and assert dominance by saying that they “always keep the hammer next to me” and “if she your girl, why she texting me?” and “Why she call me on the phone speaking sexually?”. Overall, the song eventually just a way for Young M.A. to ‘flex’ on the people listening about how many girls and how much money they have as a way to assert dominance and gain some amount of respect.

So this description of OOOUU sound very similar to a lot of rap videos and songs, especially from a few years ago as more modern rap has tried to shit away from this very aggressive objection of women’s bodies and sexuality. So, even though this song seems normal from just a text description, it’s actually quite a lot different as Young M.A. is actually a woman who is saying all of this stuff. It’s a bit jarring to think about that we so often will judge male rappers for objectifying women in their videos, but what do we do if a woman does it? Do we hold women to the same standards, even though their hypersexualization of women in music videos is inherently much less predatory as there has not been an extensive history of women on women objectification and assault the same way there has been male? So, is Young M.A. allowed to do this, or should she take a step back from objectifying women in this way as it perpetuates hypersexualization of women in the media? Honestly, M.A. is just copying common rap culture but she’s using her femininity/sexuality to her advantage because she is a woman talking about women, even though what she is saying is inherently problematic it doesn’t carry the same weight with is as it would if a man said it, so arguably she should be able to continue what she is doing because the circumstance is different since she is a woman and the history of women is different. On the other hand, it is perpetuating a negative trend in rap and hip-hop and if she does it and gets popular other people may see her doing it and want to follow suit, which is the opposite of what we would want as there has been so much progress recently in the rap genre and its portrayal of women.

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