Black Women In Music Essay

Black Women in Music: Listened to But Not Heard Despite the strides being made by black female artists in the music industry we still see the hypersexualization that black women must endure, compared to their white female counterparts. In this essay I will argue that Kimberlé Crenshaws view that women are not equally oppressed can inform the hypersexualization representation of black women in the music industry. I will defend this argument by looking at the hypersexualization of black women compared to white women in the industry.

In, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics” Crenshaw argues that black women are excluded from feminist theory. Crenshaw states that “dominant conceptions of

In the photos of the topless white women wearing thongs and bikini bottoms (similar to Minaj’s album cover) Minaj captions “Acceptable” , “Angelic” . She then follows with her own photo where she is actually wearing more clothing with the caption “UNACCEPTABLE”. This shows how Nicki is completely aware of how even though she is doing the exact same pose as white models, and wearing even more clothing, because she is a black woman her image automatically becomes hypersexualized. Crenshaw states that “further that this single-axis framework erases Black women in the conceptualization, identification and remediation of race and sex discrimination by limiting inquiry to the experiences of otherwise-privileged members of the group” (Crenshaw, 140). Minaj herself has recognized that as a black female she does not sit on the axis, and that her experience with hypersexualization is different than those her white counterparts