.Video Vixens Untold

Video Vixens! The number one topic on everyday TV, from MTV, BET, E! and more. A video vixen has so many misconceptions. This paper will illustrate the way women are represented in hip hop videos. I say its wrong, misleading, and sets a bad example. It creates stereotypes, degrades women, and young girls might be negatively influenced.

Video vixens have a lot of stereotypes. A lot of people don’t know that there’s a difference between a “video model” and a “video groupie”. The definition of a video model is someone who actually has to go through an interview and an applying process to receive the job to participate in the video, instead of selling their body to be involved. A video groupie is someone who hears about the video and comes to the set. They will often do anything to get on the video, such as sell their bodies. They are often only paid fifty dollars a day. Many people stereotype video girls who degrade themselves because they get them confused with video groupies who sell their bodies and have all type of oral sex on the scene of the video. For example, a girl named Karrine Steffans started off as a stripper, and became a famous ‘video groupie”. She was nicknamed “super head” because of the way she portrayed herself as a young girl. Karrine was forced to give oral sex with her ex-husband Kool G for over two hours. People often judge and think all women who are in a rap videos are doing things like selling their body, that’s not the case. There are plenty of gorgeous women who go to work every day. They apply for different videos and show up at the scene looking fabulous. They can make up to fifteen hundred thousand dollars a day. All in all, don’t judge a book by its cover.

To lower the character or quality of black women seems to be acceptable and common in the entertainment industry of America. It seems like degrading women is the key to success when actually education is the key. So many rappers degraded women, Run DMC to Tupac to Biggie Smalls to Snoop Dogg to Nelly to Lil Wayne and more. It’s like they love to call women sluts, smuts, hoes, whores, b****, and so many other words. What do they think? There was an interview titled hip-hop verses America and it was basically about Snoop Dogg the rapper from the west coast of the US telling his way of thinking about women. He says if women portray themselves as those type women then there going to get treated that way. He said it’s not that rappers don’t have respect, but it’s that women don’t have respect for them selves. I actually agree on the point he’s making. If you don’t have self respect than who's going to have self respect for you? Nobody is going to take you seriously especially a man. Clearly, degrading women is something I want to change in the entertainment industry.

Videos are a way of advertising things, entertaining people, and especially entertaining the younger crowd from ages ten to twenty and sometimes older. There are younger girls who watch these types of videos and say to themselves “wow someday I want to be like those girls”, not knowing the difference between a model and a groupie. What teenage girl doesn’t want to ride in fancy cars and wear all the latest clothes, and get dressed up in the big flashing lights? Its entertainment! So as a solution us as in people have to stop degrading are women, showing uncut videos, and balancing out the two. For instance, put positive things in the video to as well. If theres always something negative in the videos and nothing positive what are they going to follow, who are they going to follow? Because I know you entertainers don’t want your daughters or siblings following the footsteps of women known as smuts and whores. However, if rap artist keep degrading women, their album wouldn’t sell and they wouldn’t make any money. If degradation of women did not sell and make people money, I guarantee you they would stop doing it and do whatever would make them money. Rappers need to stop making those degrading videos, but us as in consumers have the power to not support them. So we have to make a change. MAKE A CHANGE!